


Keep The Car Running

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Cobra Starship, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Identity Porn, M/M, Threesome - M/M/M, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disaster Boy and the Kobra Kid: a love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep The Car Running

**Author's Note:**

> See endnotes for a listing of non-Killjoys characters/their call signs.

It's easy to find someone in the Zones if you know how to ask.

Not just how, but who; you have to be in on it, part of the network. It's a big, sprawling thing, weaving through the desert like a spiderweb made out of junk and whispers and made-up, fairytale names.

(Funny thing about fairytales: they're born uglier than what they turn into.)

(Like Zonerunners that way.)

But if you know the how and the who, and you have the right code of one-off jokes and references (keep your secrets in your head, bite your tongue out if you have to), it's easy to find and be found.

One DJ starts it off, purring "Disaster Boy wants to send a message out to a very special listener out there. He says baby, don't you worry, he's on his way home." 

The signal stretches out, floating over the dust, reaching for the mountains til it runs out of juice and dies off into the wind. But it's gone far enough for a runner to pick it up and pass it on, skates gliding or bike tearing over the pavement until it gets to the next station. And then it goes out again, over and over, fanning out in circles until it covers the whole grid and, somewhere in there, gets where it's going.

Kobra Kid hears the Disaster Boy message ringing off the metal and plastic of a shot-out, empty fuel station. He almost smiles.

**

"I gotta go," he says, stepping back out of the station. The late-afternoon sun is shading over from white to gold, and he bumps his sunglasses up higher on his nose. "You guys got this covered?"

"Gotta go where?" If Kobra didn't know better, he'd think Ghoul was actually interested. "You always come up with some reason to disappear when it's time for the actual work. Don't think we haven't noticed."

"Fuck off." Kobra tugs his bandanna off and wipes the back of his neck. "Just came over the waves. Zas is looking for me."

It takes a minute for it to sink it; he can see when they get it. Jet's eyebrows go up and Poison's expression crumples. Ghoul giggles like something you hear when you're trying to fall asleep and the sand won't stop blowing. "He's still alive? Shit."

"Alive enough to send something out on the network." Kobra ties his bandanna again, squinting toward the horizon to judge the level of dust in the air the way he'll be going. "Said he's on his way home."

"You're going to haul ass all the way from here to the Cantina?" Jet asks. Kobra shrugs, watching Poison, who shakes his head and kicks at one of the boxes of contraband they're supposed to be moving from point a (this particular shithole) to point b (an entirely different shithole). Ghoul isn't wrong; Kobra is indeed skipping out on the actual work. He's not sorry.

Giving away your destination out loud and in the open is just stupid. Kobra takes his helmet from the back of the bike and dodges the edges of Jet's question. "I'm going."

Every inch of Poison's body is still saying not-happy, but he just shoves another box in the back of the Trans Am. "Meet you in three days at Five Corners."

"Four days."

"Three. Or good luck finding us again." Kobra tilts his head in acknowledgment. His brother's being petty and stupid, but he didn't expect any differently. Poison never liked Zas anyway.

"So I'm going," he says again, and finally, they all three of them look at him at the same time.

"Good luck," Jet says. "Have fun."

"Happy fucking," Ghoul adds. "Keep your mask on."

"While I'm fucking?" Kobra asks, straddling the bike. "Twisted."

Poison doesn't say anything, just keeps looking pissy and lifts his hand in a curt half-wave. Kobra doesn't expect more than that, so it's okay. They stopped telling each other not to get killed a long time ago.

**

Home, the way Disaster Boy means it, isn't the Cantina, but a couple klicks north and west of there. Kobra takes the turnoffs by memory, bringing the bike to a halt at the washout and leaving it propped up against the cliff face. He slides his thumb across the print-lock and leaves his helmet dangling from the handlebars, then starts to climb. 

It's an easy climb as these things go; years of Zonerunners heading up this way have practically left a path up the rock face. Over the years a few of the hand- and footholds have been carved out for ease of shimmying up the cliff like a spider. Kobra's not graceful, but he's efficient. He's barely breathing hard when he gets to the top. 

It looks smaller than he remembers, and sadder. A red-stone ampitheater, seating fifty easy, a hundred if they're more friendly than Zonerunners get. Kobra's eyes track across the central platform, just windswept rock now. If he goes closer, close enough to touch the boulders that make up the low wall around the back seats, he knows he'll find carvings and paintings, names and desert prayers scratched into the rock like the sand's not going to eat them all away. He doesn't look.

He sits down in the front row of seats, swings his feet up, and waits.

The thing about following a DJ message is that they almost never come with timing attached. The usual way is to wait one day after getting it started, then be at the specified location for three nights before bailing. 

Disaster Boy doesn't always follow convention. Of course. But given how remote their dirty little home base is, and how long it's been since they saw each other, Kobra has a hunch he's not going to be spending the night alone.

He tilts his head back and drags his fingers through his hair, breaking up the crust of sweat and grease enough to let the wind tug a little at the strands of dirty blond. His sunglasses slide down his nose and he lets them, just breathing in air that has some actual coolness to it, maybe even smells a little bit like plants and water and things that aren't dead. That always was his favorite thing about this place, being able to smell the mountains.

He hears the soft click of plastic and throws himself sideways, off the bench and onto the rough gravel, rolling hard and drawing his weapon. His glasses fly off, forgotten. His head bumps off the edge of the bench in a way that's going to fucking hurt when he has time to notice it.

Right now he's just looking down the barrel of his gun and up another one, flat black plastic that leads to the not-quite-smiling face of Disaster Boy.

"You ever hear of giving a safe sign, you fuck?" Kobra doesn't mean to whine. Zonerunners aren't big on whining. But he almost bashed his fucking head in because of this idiot. "If my shades broke, I'm kicking your ass."

"Is that any way to talk to the love of your life?" 

"I'll let you know if I see him."

"Ouch." Disaster Boy laughs and lowers his gun first, sliding it back into its holster and stepping in close to offer Kobra his hand. Kobra thinks about shooting him in the foot, but holsters and takes his hand instead. They always tried to keep violence out of home base. There'll be time to shoot him later.

Disaster Boy doesn't let go of his hand once he's standing. He brushes Kobra's hair off his forehead with his free hand, traces his eyebrows and cheekbones, taps the end of his nose. "Hey, Kid."

Kobra isn't going to smile for him. He really isn't. So far Disaster Boy has earned a punch in the throat, not a smile. "Hey, Zas."

"Missed you." Zas traces his thumb over Kobra's knuckles, his lips quirking up into a smile, and despite all his stern intentions, Kobra returns it. "Glad to see you. Some of the things you hear out there, thought I was going to come back here and find nothing but a shadow."

"Same to you. The stunts you pull..." He shrugs, careful not to let go of Zas's hand. "Not that I believe everything I hear."

"Half of them are stories I make up to keep BLInd twitching." Disaster Boy grins and leans in, resting his forehead against Kobra's. They're eye to eye, nose to nose, breathing in time. Fuck, Kobra has missed this.

"You gonna kiss me hello, love of my life?" Disaster Boy asks.

Kobra thinks about it for a minute. "Nah," he says. He turns his head and catches Zas's finger in his teeth. "But if you brought me some water and a 'septic, I'll suck you off."

**

Disaster Boy brought not only water and antiseptic wipes but a condom, too. He's a gentleman. Kobra goes down on him right there in the open, kneeling on the gritty dirt while Zas sprawls his legs wide and leans back with his hands braced on the bench. Kobra's mouth is used to sliding against latex, his nose used to choking against the smell of weeks of stale sweat, human gunk, and a thin layer of stinging alcohol on top.

Zas returns the favor by pushing Kobra down on his back and lying on top of him, kissing deep and rough while he shoves his hand down the front of Kobra's jeans and lets him rut up against his fingers. Kobra's pretty sure that Zas's fingers are what he fell in love with first. He remembers watching them play over the surface of the table at the shitty underground where they met, remembers them jacking vending machines and splicing power cables, remembers the first time they pushed into his mouth and he sucked them all the way to the third knuckle. He thinks about Zas's fingers most of the nights when he's fucking down on his own hand, when the Killjoys crash somewhere with enough privacy to get off. He's missed them.

They lie there in the dirt for a while afterward, watching the stars track by overhead, Zas's hand still tucked down inside Kobra's jeans. "You call me out here just to say hello?" Kobra asks finally, resting his chin against the top of Zas's head. Zas's hair is thick and heavy with grease, some its own and some the shit Zas works into it to keep it from going wild when he takes his helmet off. The smell's familiar, comforting in a weird way. Kobra never would have listed it as one of the things he misses about Zas, but apparently it is.

Zas snorts softly and traces a line down Kobra's chest, over his t-shirt. "You know me better than that, baby."

Kobra nods, working his fingertips slowly down into Zas's hair until he can rub them against his scalp. He might've named himself Disaster Boy, but then he went out and earned it with the craziest stunts any Zonerunner had ever survived pulling. He isn't quiet. He doesn't do anything just to get a moment, even one as nice as this.

"I've got a strike planned out." Zas's fingers curl in Kobra's belt loops, tugging restlessly. "Right in Battery City." 

"You're not going to try to kill him, are you?" Killing the man at the top. Taking out Korse, like it's that fucking simple. That's what everybody tries. That's how everyone ends up ghosted.

"No." Zas moves to the zipper, coaxing it up half an inch and then back down over the damp, worn-thin fabric of Kobra's underwear. "Trickier plan than that. Sneaker. A Disaster Boy special."

Kobra drags his fingers slowly through Zas's curls, pushing through each knot and catch. Zas doesn't fight him. He bends into hurt. "And you need backup?"

"I need a partner."

Kobra lets his hand go still, tangled in Zas's hair. "And you thought of me."

"Of course I did, baby." Zas lifts his head and looks at him through hooded eyes. It's too dark to project any meaning into the look on his face. "It's what we promised, right? For better or for worse and all that shit. Partners."

**

They sleep on and off in a ragged pattern until dawn, then climb back down the cliff and walk to the bikes. Kobra slides his thumb across the print scanner again and waits for the battery to power up, hiding a smile as Disaster Boy painstakingly reconnects jacked wires. "You make things more complicated for yourself."

"Hush."

"One of these days you're going to fry yourself, hotwiring that stupid bike."

"We don't all have Jet to reprogram things."

"He would help you if you asked."

"He would help me if I humbled myself." The wires spark and the bike whirs as the system comes online. "And I'd rather be electrocuted."

Kobra tilts his head in acknowledgment and shakes windblown dust out of his helmet. "I don't have to meet up with my guys for another two days."

"You saying we should take a second honeymoon?"

"I'm asking where you want to go, dick."

"I need some intel." Zas straddles his bike and squints up against the sky with a frown. "Are my sources spotty or is the Joker still in business?"

"I don't think he's been broadcasting." Kobra chews at his lower lip and flicks through the rumors and lies in his head. "But we saw the Queen out and rolling a week ago."

"Doesn't mean he's not dog food."

Kobra shrugs and pulls his helmet down, flipping the kickstand back with his heel. "Just telling you what I know."

Zas exhales in a slow huff. "Where'd you see her?"

"Nine-alpha-seven."

"That's around where he was, last I heard." Zas gets his own helmet on, then swings his arms in wide arcs, loosening up for the road. "Might as well check it out. Remember not to flirt with him in front of me, darling, it breaks my heart."

"Fuck off, you're the one who..."

"Race you!"

Kobra rolls his eyes and lets his visor fall into place, then guns the bike into gear and shoots back up the gully toward the road. 

**

The Joker is living at what once was an airfield. The tarmac is cracked and useless, most of the sheet metal has been stripped off the hangars and carried away, but the tower and main building are still intact. Fortified, even. Kobra and Zas park their bikes at the doors, next to a sleek black low-set one, built to hug the asphalt. It has a red heart painted on the fender, smooth and perfect. 

Zas pushes the door open and stepping inside. It's dark inside, but only a few degrees cooler, the air stuffy and choked with dust. "Joker? We know you're home."

"Home is where the heart is," comes the Queen of Hearts' voice from somewhere in the dark. Kobra's hand drops to his gun automatically and he squints into the shadows. "Guess we're all just fucked, huh?"

"You've been hanging out with him too much." Kobra can hear Zas's smile in his voice. "Starting to sound like him. Get out here where we can see you, gorgeous. Turn some lights on."

"We don't have the juice to run lights all the time." She steps out where they can see her a little bit, though, in the bit of light spilling in through the open door. "Disaster Boy and the Kobra Kid. What brings you out our way?"

"Missed your pretty face." Zas holds out his fist. She rolls her eyes and bumps knuckles with him, then with Kobra.

"You're all static, you know."

"All but six inches," Kobra murmurs, then dodges Zas's sharp elbow. "How's Joker?"

Queen stands up a little straighter, one hand sliding back to check her gun. Her reflexes have gotten a lot smoother since the last time Kobra saw her. Joker's been teaching her a lot about how to live out here. "He's fine."

Kobra can feel Zas's skeptical look without even looking at him. "And how are we defining fine?"

Queen shrugs. "Fine."

"Is he broadcasting?" Kobra asks, before the two of them can get in a pissing match that lasts an hour and doesn't get any of them out of the entryway.

She darts her eyes toward the set of doors between them and the staircase up to the tower. "No. But you know how he is. It comes and goes."

"Oh, do we ever know," Zas says dryly. "C'mon, Kobra. Let's go see the boy."

"Are the rest of the Killjoys sitting out on my doorstep?" Queen asks, smoothly angling her body between them and the doors. Kobra approves of her more with every moment. Runners are the DJs' protection, the ones who watch their backs while they're wrapped up in music and codes and patching together the broken-glass shards of information that keep the network alive. He'd had his doubts about if the Queen could keep Joker safe when they started out. He feels better about it now.

"No," he answers her, sliding his glasses off and hooking them on the collar of his jacket. "Just the two of us."

"And I'm not going to get a squad of Dracs in here who tailed you from Route Guano?"

"Have a _little_ respect, huh?" Zas shakes his head. "I think I'm offended."

"We're clean," Kobra says, giving her the closest he can to a smile. "Can we go up?"

Her shoulders drop enough that he knows she means it when she nods. He catches Zas's elbow and steers him over to the doors, then up into the sun-bright main room at the top of the tower. "Hello? Joker?"

"Come out come out wherever you are," Zas drawls, looking around the room. "Fuck, this is a wreck and a half."

"I know where everything is," Joker says, flipping them off from his chair looking out toward the north-side stretch of desert waste. "Don't touch any of it."

"Do we get a hello?" Kobra asks, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"You get greetings and salutations, even." Joker slips out of his seat and walks over to them, grabbing Zas's hand and squeezing tight before throwing his free arm around Kobra and leaning in against his chest. "Did you get taller?"

"It's the boots." Kobra kisses his hair and rubs the back of his head until he lets go and steps back. Joker's lost weight since the last time Kobra saw him, and that's no illusion of wardrobe. He's jumpy, too, skittering around the room like a lizard. "How you holding up out here?"

"Good. Great. I've got the Queen watching my back, what could go wrong?" Joker moves over to a mountain of boxes and pokes through the one on top. "How are the Fabulous Killjoys?"

"Still running."

"Party Poison still a humorless fuck?"

Kobra rolls his eyes and walks over to take Joker's chair. "He sends his love."

"Ha. I doubt it." Joker glances at Zas and then away again. "You're still alive."

"Why does everyone always say that to me?" Zas scowls and sits down on Kobra's lap. "Obviously I'm still alive."

"Your plans are bad," Kobra says, resting his chin on Zas's shoulder. "One day they're going to get you killed."

"Or ghosted." Joker bounces on his toes a little and moves away from the boxes. 

"How come you're not transmitting?" Zas asks, sliding his hand down to thread his fingers with Kobra's. "You're in a fucking tower, ace. You would get better range than anybody. You're wasting it."

"I'm not wasting it." Joker frowns, pivoting in a tight circle like he's checking all horizons. "I just don't have anything to say."

"So play some fucking music. Honestly." Zas sighs and leans back against Kobra, turning his head enough to kiss his cheek. "You're caught in the headlights. Get some broader vision."

"Was there a reason you came out here besides lecturing me?"

Kobra hides a smile against Zas's hair. He can see Joker shaking off the scared and frozen layers already. Zas has that effect on him. "Our boy here's got a new plan."

"Does it suck?"

"He hasn't told me anything yet, but of course it does."

"Fuck you both," Zas says, elbowing Kobra in the stomach. "It's genius."

"The fuck it is." Joker rocks back and forth on his heels. "Well, c'mon, spill it. What do you need from me?"

"I need your assistance," Zas says, "putting together a package."

Joker's mouth twists up, not quite a smile. "I've got some skill at packages, it's true."

"A _broadcast_ package, you little fuck."

"Oh, in that case." He pushes the tower of boxes off the chair in a clatter of discs and a cloud of dust. "Let's hear it."

**

Kobra falls asleep about ten minutes into their conversation. Not because he doesn't want to know what Zas is up to, but because the two of them tend to talk in a fast-paced, half-mumbled code, and he's tired. Being somewhere reasonably safe is hardwired into his brain as a chance to pass the fuck out for a while.

When he wakes up, the sun has gone down and he's alone at the top of the tower. He moves over to the north-side window, where Joker was seated earlier, and looks out at the stars swooping down to touch the horizon. It looks peaceful out there tonight. 

He can hear movement downstairs, and low conversation. His sinuses are permanently fried and ripped up by dust and dry air, but he's pretty sure he smells something that isn't Power Pup straight from the can. That's enough to lure him down the stairs out of the quiet privacy that otherwise might keep him still for hours.

He finds them in the little kitchen at the back of the ground floor, the only room with any lights on. Joker's standing at the stove, stirring something in a pan; on closer sniff it is Power Pup, but heated up and mixed with spices that Joker shakes out of a paper bag, and something else that might be honest to God plant matter. Kobra's impressed. And starving.

"There you are." Disaster Boy is sitting at the table, stripped down to his undershorts, a needle and thread in hand and his jacket across his lap. "Starting to think you were going to sleep through the night."

"You'd better wake me up for food, fucker." Kobra kisses the top of his head and drops into one of the other chairs, rubbing his eyes hard in an effort to chase the last sleep from them. "Can you do my jacket next?"

"We're together for a day and you're putting me to work. I see how it is."

"You're good at mending."

"Jet's better. Make him do it when you get back."

Kobra rolls his eyes and swings his feet up into Zas's lap. "Where's Queen?"

"Security sweep." Joker sprinkles more spices into the pan and stirs slowly. "I think she just needed some air."

"Your girl hates to sit still," Zas agrees. "I'm amazed you can keep her here."

"She's not my girl. And she does what she wants." Joker turns the stove off and runs his hand over his hair. "Anyway. Let's eat and then I'll go see if I can pull the rest of those files for you."

"You going to explain this to me now?" Kobra asks, nudging Zas's stomach with his boot. 

"He didn't even explain it to me," Joker says. "Just told me what he needs me to get together."

Zas shrugs. "If nobody knows the whole story, nobody can sell anybody else out."

Joker sets a stack of battered plates on the table with a bang. "You think we'd sell you out?"

"I think if you get caught you won't have a choice." Zas shakes his head and pushes Kobra's feet off his lap. "And that's all I think until we're done eating, okay?"

Kobra bites back a sigh and glances at Joker, trying to catch his eye and cue him to settle down. They don't have a lot of time, for anything. Wasting any of it fighting would be stupid.

Joker meets his gaze for a minute, then shrugs and starts scooping the meal onto the plates. "Whatever. I'm gonna eat upstairs. Come up when you're done, okay?"

"Got it." Zas watches him go, then looks at Kobra. "Eat fast. We've got time to make out on the table before he gets suspicious."

"Queen might object to walking in on that."

Zas wiggles his eyebrows. "Or she might join in." 

"Keep dreaming." Kobra slides his chair closer so he can hook ankles with Zas. "Any particular reason you stripped down just to fix your jacket?"

"They let me wash up. Enough gray water for a sponge bath." Zas leans in close and kisses Kobra's cheek. "Smell me."

Kobra sniffs obediently and returns the kiss. "You let me sleep through taking a bath. I fucking hate you."

Zas laughs and settles back in his seat. "Ask Queen after dinner. She'll hook you up while he and I are working."

"When are you going to tell me the plan?"

"Like I said, what you don't know..."

"That's not good enough."

Zas' mouth closes with a click. For a minute he isn't the guy Kobra's known since a month after he left Battery City, he's not his friend, he's not his partner or his handfasted or even a guy Kobra trusts. He's Disaster Boy, the Zonerunner with no fear, no brakes, and no particular interest in what happens to collateral damage.

And then he's not, again. "Not tonight. Soon."

Kobra nods and turns back to his plate, trying to ignore the ripple of unease down his spine. He's not afraid of anything, either, but that doesn't mean he likes hitting the wall as hard as Zas seems to. He just has to hope that he gets the whole story before it's too late to hit the brakes.

**

Kobra stays behind when Disaster Boy goes upstairs to work on whatever the secret plan is with the Joker. He finishes eating and lingers at the table, eyes closed and enjoying the soft hum of the lights, the slight hint of coolness in the air, the vague and definitely untrustworthy sense of safety he gets in this place.

He hears Queen clear her throat and opens one eye a crack, glancing at her in the doorway.

"You want to clean up?" she asks. "You can rinse your clothes out, too, if you want."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

She laughs and shakes her head. "No. I promise. C'mon."

He follows her down a short flight of stairs to a cinderblock room with two large plastic tubs of water in the far corner. "Gray water," she says, brushing her hair off her forehead. "Don't drink it."

"Got it." Kobra tugs his t-shirt off and undoes his jeans, letting them slide down his hips as he moves over to the tubs. The water in one is cloudy, the other at a lower level and clear. "You guys filter?"

"Distill." Queen rummages in a box on the floor and tosses him a sponge. "You want me to get your back?"

"Sure." Kobra dips the sponge in the clear water and wipes his chest, biting his lip as cool droplets run down his skin and vanish under the waistband of his jeans. "Better than sex."

"I'm going to tell your boy you said that."

"He'll live." He squeezes the water into the cloudy tub, then dips the sponge in the clean again and wipes at his armpits. "His ego can use it."

"Ouch." Her sponge lingers over the Widow tattooed on his shoulder, like she's cleaning each line in turn.

"But true."

"Didn't say it wasn't," Queen says. Water runs down his spine and under his jeans, and he balances his sponge on the edge of the tub, stepping away from her to strip out of the denim completely. "You want to wash those?"

"They won't dry before we have to leave."

"I'll hang them up to air out."

He nods, his chest tight at being stripped down in front of her, wearing nothing but his skin and ink and scars. She's behind him, and there are certain codes of behavior in the Zones; Joker wouldn't have let her stay this long if she hadn't learned them and believed in where they came from. Still. Living out here came with a certain aversion to vulnerability, issued along with the guns and the bikes and only ever being able to sleep if you could hear the wind singing over the sand. 

Her fingers trace down his back. She steps away before he says anything. "There's some stuff in the cabinet there you can wear tonight. Hang your shirt up on the hook there to dry."

He nods and she leaves, and then he's alone in the quiet, cool dimness. He washes the rest of his body, lingering over the here-and-there scars. Drops run and gather in the tangled hair between his legs until he washes there, too, slicking the coarse curls down to skin. He wets his hands and combs water back through his hair until it's wet but not dripping, then shakes his head hard to coax it to fluff up and dry.

When he's as clean as he's going to get out here, he scoops cleanish water into a shallow basin and dips his shirt three times, squeezing the excess out into the dirty-water tank each time. He hangs the shirt on the hook Queen indicated, then takes a soft-faded length of cloth from the cupboard and wraps it around his waist.

"They're still upstairs," Queen says when he comes back into the dining area. "I can show you where to sleep, if you don't want to go watch them do...whatever they're doing."

Kobra shakes his head, glancing up at the ceiling and then dropping his gaze. He does want to go up there, wants to sit by Zas's side and let the low mutter of him and Joker spinning bullshit back and forth put him to sleep again. But if there's one thing he knows about Disaster Boy, it's that he likes his pace. "Show me where to crash, I think. Long fucking day."

She leads him through the flat darkness of the main chamber of the building, along a path through the junk and debris she must know from memory. At the end of the path is a door that leads into a tiny room with a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Kobra almost tells her to leave it off--they've already sucked up enough juice that it'll leave her and Joker with shortages for a month--but gets distracted by what he sees.

It isn't much objectively; a six-foot-square space with metal walls, more like a space capsule from an old movie than the welded-together afterthoughts where they sleep at safehouses in the desert. There's a cot with a real pillow and a stack of blankets piled at the foot. For the Zones, it's the height of fucking luxury.

"This is Joker's room," she says. "But your boy gave him a project, so he'll be up all night working."

Kobra nods. "More interesting than sleep."

"You know him well."

"Not really. Not better than anybody else." He tugs the makeshift sarong higher on his hips and sits carefully on the edge of the cot, making sure it'll hold his weight. "Thanks."

"I always learned to be hospitable to guests." She smiles a little, her eyes wandering over his scars but then coming back up to his face without widening or getting shifty. "Shout if you need anything."

That's literal, he knows; shouting is much less likely to prompt gunfire than slinking around quietly would. "I will."

She turns off the light and drops him into absolute dark. He lies back, eyes open as if he can catch something from the blackness out of sheer will. It's quiet, too, no trace of the wind or hum of electricity.

He's not going to sleep for shit in that kind of quiet.

He turns onto his stomach and pulls one of the blankets up over himself, knocking the others to the floor as he shakes it out. Restless sleep is better than nothing. Maybe when Disaster Boy comes in and he can hear him breathe, it'll be better.

**

He does doze off a bit, settling into a wavery half-sleep. Disaster Boy stumbling into the room, laughing softly and navigating a second body along with him, jolts Kobra fully awake again.

"Hey," Zas whispers, laughing again, and Kobra smiles a little against his pillow, knowing the greeting isn't for him. He can't see Zas's face, but he can picture it. He knows this. "Hey, hey. Relax. It's okay."

"Don't want to wake up Kobra," whispers Joker, and Kobra burrows a little further down under his blanket. 

"He's okay." Kobra can hear the affection in Zas's voice, and smiles again, turning his face toward them in the dark. He's as invisible as they are, and he likes it. Secret messages, things only he and Disaster Boy know.

He lies still and listens to them kissing. Joker makes rough little noises, needy and hot, and Kobra wishes he could reach out, touch him, join them in this. Give and take a little himself. But they think he's asleep; this is just between the two of them. He won't disrespect that.

They shake the blankets out on the floor and curl up together. Kobra counts his own breaths and listens to them kiss, slower and lazier as their exhaustion settles over them and they drift off to sleep. He waits another count of five hundred after the last time they move, then eases off the cot, tugging his blanket with him, and joins them on the floor.

He nestles up next to Zas, his head on Zas's shoulder, one arm settling over Joker's waist to keep him in close with them. He breathes deep, assuring that nervous part of his back-brain that they're really here, they're close, it's not a lie. He listens to Zas's heartbeat and Joker's breathing until they lull him down to sleep.

** 

Kobra wakes up with Zas flush against his back, one leg flung over top of both of his, one hand rubbing slow, lazy circles over Kobra's lower abdomen. "Quit it," Kobra mumbles, turning his head to bite vaguely at Zas's shoulder. 

Zas's hand stills and he nuzzles at Kobra's cheek. "Just wanted to say good morning."

"Yeah, I can feel you saying good morning." Kobra rubs back against him in illustration, letting Zas's dick poke against his ass. "You should do something about that thing."

"I was _going_ to."

Kobra snorts and shakes his head, reaching out blindly with his free hand to see if Joker's still there. He pokes at ribs and the softer flesh of stomach before another hand catches his and threads their fingers together. "Hey."

"Hey." Joker's voice is thick and rough with sleep. "I should go check on Queen."

"She's fine," Zas says, his hand sliding down Kobra's arm to find its way to their joined hands. His fingers are long and broad enough to wrap around them both, hold them together. "She's always fine. You found yourself one hard-core little crash queen."

"She doesn't care for that term." Joker moves closer, seeking both their warmth, ending up pressed chest to chest with Kobra. Kobra makes himself breathe slowly, deeply, soak in the feeling of being surrounded. Grounded instead of adrift in space. No escape routes, because he doesn't need to escape from them. It's different. He has to remember to like it, every time.

Zas kisses the back of Kobra's neck, nuzzling through the stiff, tangled mess of his hair. Kobra nods a little, shifting so Zas can rub against him more steadily, with a better angle. "Joker?"

"What?" The warm breath of the word hits Kobra about mid-throat, letting him orient himself. He goes on that and instinct to move his head, and still ends up pressing a kiss to Joker's eyelid.

Joker laughs and moves, finding his way blindly up to kiss Kobra properly. His free hand skates down Kobra's chest, heading south, and Kobra shakes his head, catching it and guiding it down to Joker's own dick. They both wrap their fingers around him, stroking in rhythm with their kisses, slow and careful. 

"Wish I could see you," Zas whispers. Kobra makes a soft sound of agreement against Joker's mouth, squeezing him a little for emphasis, and feels Zas's hips hitch a little as he tries to slow himself down. Kobra actually likes this, fucking in the dark, the way they're all reduced to sounds and skin. 

He guides their joined hands downward, Zas following along a split second late, and turns them to rub his own knuckles against himself, pressing hard against just the spot he wants, letting the heat and want twisting in his stomach find a target to run for. Grind and gasp and _press_ , just enough, with Zas's dick bucking against the small of his back and Joker's cock hot in the circle of his fingers, Joker's breath hot against his mouth like Zas's is hot against his hair. Wrapped up. Enfolded.

This is what he forgets about, running in the desert. This is what he needs to remember. Sometimes bodies are not alone.

**

Zas and Joker spend the next morning up in the tower again, absorbed in whatever their work is. Kobra borrows a toolkit from Queen and works on the bikes. He strips down to a pair of shorts from the mysterious collection of clothes in the basement room and lets the sun beat down on him while he takes things apart, checks for sand damage, and puts them back together again, tighter and cleaner.

It's mindless work, but rewarding in that he gets immediate results under his hands. Better than sitting around inside waiting for Zas to finish his cryptic work and say they can move on.

Kobra's got an itch under his skin already, a vague awareness that the clock is ticking on meeting up with the rest of his crew. If they're late, Poison won't wait for him. He can't. Those are the rules, and the Zones don't forgive breaking them. 

"You're going to get sunsick and die out here."

Kobra wipes his arm across his forehead and shrugs without turning around. "Feels good."

"You're bright red already."

Kobra drops his wrench to the dust. "That'll bother me, not you, so don't worry about it."

"Come inside. They're going to feed us before we hit the cracktop."

Kobra glances over his shoulder. They've held still longer than he's comfortable with, and he's had just a little bit too much time to think, out here in the sun and the dust. Whatever he says is going to come out sharp and bratty. He wonders if Zas remembers that about him as well as he remembers how to kiss and touch. "You and Joker are done with your secret project?"

Zas raises an eyebrow deliberately. "It's not a secret."

"You haven't told me what it is."

"It's not time yet."

"I kind of thought I might get special consideration," Kobra says. He starts gathering up Queen's tools and putting them back into their case. He got all of Zas's bike done and half of his own. Good enough. 

"Because you're my man?" Zas's voice is light, teasing; there's no reason for it to send a jolt of anger and humiliation through Kobra's chest.

He shrugs and locks the case closed. "Forget it. Do what you want."

"Hey."

Kobra tries to step around him, but Zas catches his arm, his fingers curling around it loosely enough that Kobra could easily pull away. That fact's the only reason he doesn't do it. 

"Hey," Zas says again, softly. "Dial that down a little, huh? Don't ghost me for running my mouth."

"You need a radiator on that thing," Kobra says. "It runs too hot to handle."

Zas doesn't pick up the chance to make a joke. His eyes stay steady on Kobra's, and his hand rubs lightly over skin that yeah, Kobra has to admit now, is too hot. It stings. "What's got you all twisted?"

"We can't just stay here. We're targets."

"Didn't say anything about staying here." Zas brushes his lips against Kobra's forehead, and Kobra closes his eyes, old instincts telling him to lean into Zas and be, if not safe, half-sheltered. "And not any more targets than the two of them are any other day."

"They're in a different line of business." He keeps his eyes fixed on the hollow of Zas's throat. "Zonerunners are supposed to run."

"Got it. You're restless."

Kobra shrugs and looks away, scanning the horizon for nothing. "I guess."

"Okay." Zas nods and lets him go, dragging his fingers through his own hair and squinting up at the sky. "We'll head out after we eat."

Kobra's eyes snap back to Zas' face. "That easy?"

"When it comes to you, baby, I'm the easiest."

Joker and Queen don't say anything about the shift in plans, just nod and serve up the Power Pup.

"I'll get everything copied for you," Joker says. "It'll be rougher than you wanted, but workable. Half an hour tops and you can hit it. Queen, can you go out and ride the grid while Kobra gets ready?"

"On it," she says, bumping her hand against Kobra's shoulder as she leaves the room. Kobra shoots Joker a grateful look, and receives a little smile in return. Maybe everyone here understands restless a little better than Kobra thought. 

That lasts right up until he goes leaves the room and Joker says "So you two are going on a honeymoon," in a sing-song voice before he's actually out of earshot. Kobra looks back and catches Zas just grinning, like that's the reason, Kobra wanting some fucking alone time. Assholes. Both of them. See if Kobra ever kicks anything special out toward the tower again. 

He makes his way down to the basement and finds his clothes, checking the gray-water levels with the automatic anxiety that comes from living out here. Water gets fussed over like a baby, even if it isn't yours. The t-shirt and jeans are cool against his skin. He savors it, knowing the feeling will only last a few seconds and it'll be so long before he feels it again that he'll have forgotten it's even possible. He wet-combs his hair again with his fingers, smoothing it to his skull so it'll go under his helmet easily.

His leathers feel fucking miserable over his clothes. He sighs and walks back up the stairs, tugging his gloves on as he goes. (He's been told by reliable sources that those gloves are sexy, and him putting them on is even more so. He operates on the assumption that that's bullshit. Zas has never given him an indication one way or the other; but then, they're usually in a hurry when they see each other, either outrunning Dracs or trying to get somewhere they can pay attention to more than each other's hands.)

Zas is waiting by the door, sunglasses in place now. They're purple-framed, mirrored, and ridiculous, oversized for his thin face. Kobra has a sudden flash of memory, from when the angles of Zas' face weren't so stark, his bones not so prominent. He remembers Zas smiled a lot, then, and laughed louder than anyone. 

A lot of things die in the Zones. 

"You ready?" Zas asks. Kobra doesn't answer, just lets his eyes wander down from the ugly glasses to Zas' running leathers. His jacket's purple and gold, pieces of two or three jackets stitched and riveted together with as much prayer as skill. His jeans are black and tight, like most runners', but with silver stitching down the outer seams, and tucked down inside bright silver boots.

He looks good enough to fuck on the floor. Kobra kind of wishes he hadn't pushed to get back on the road.

"Hasn't been half an hour yet," he says finally, glancing over the tops of his glasses to meet Zas' eyes.

"Won't really take that long. He overestimates." Zas glances up the stairs. "We'll go as soon as he comes back down."

Kobra nods and bumps his glasses up higher on his nose. "Now who's in a hurry?"

Zas laughs, shaking his head. "So fucking contrary."

"That's why we work."

"That's right, baby." Zas runs his hand over his hair, grinning at Kobra over his glasses. "You know we're endgame. When the bombs go off again, you and me, Kobra. It's gonna be the two of us running the fallout."

Kobra has to smile back, curling his fingers against the palms of his gloves in his pockets. "You remember the time we--"

"Of course I fucking remember. That was all me. Next thing you know you're going to try to teach me to steal a bike." Zas' hand slides over the small of Kobra's back and Kobra takes a deep breath, tasting the desert. 

(It was the first time they took on a mission together, and the first of the runs that gave Disaster Boy his legend as a suicide missile on two legs and the Kobra Kid his rep as a steady hand. A single squad of Dracs had tracked the two of them and their contraband for two days, up one Zone and down the side-roads of another, until Kobra threw the brakes and said he'd had enough.

"You got a plan to go with that?" Zas said, leaning on the handlebars of his bike. Kobra shook his head, looked around, and both their eyes settled on the fuel station at the same moment.

"Tanks are probably dry as a bone," Kobra said, and Zas shook his head, starting to smile that crazy fucking smile that only his mother could love. And Kobra, after that day.

"I bet you all the PowerPup you can eat that the dustgrinders on our tails called ahead and have a nice refueling set waiting here for them."

"And people guarding it."

"Leave that to me."

Half an hour later, they set the desert on fire.

The desert, the Dracs after them, the Dracs guarding the fuel station, and the fuel station, actually. And their own bikes, because Disaster Boy had to earn his name somehow.)

"We outran it," Kobra says abruptly, blinking against the sun. "On foot. How did we do that?"

"We were young and stupid and didn't know any better." Zas rests his chin on top of Kobra's head, sliding his arm around his waist to tug him closer. "Thought we could do anything."

"Haven't been proven wrong yet."

"We're still here, anyway." Kobra can't feel anything through their layers of jackets, but he can imagine Zas' heartbeat. "And you agreed to marry me."

Kobra rolls his eyes and jabs his elbow back at Zas's stomach. "I asked _you_ , asshole."

"Not how I remember it."

"Bullshit." Not that Kobra really remembers it at all. He knows they were at the Cantina, drinking the fresh underground homebrew, the stuff that either took you out of your head or made you go blind and crazy and fall over your own tire tracks. He knows he kissed Zas in the middle of the room and told him he wanted to run with him forever. He knows the next day they woke up in the back of the Trans Am with Poison in the front not speaking to either of them, and already halfway to the Crossroads.

"Maybe somebody at the Cantina will back me up." Zas smiles a little and hugs Kobra tightly. "We're going there next, after we talk to your guys."

Kobra leans into him, wishing he could feel more. Skin-to-skin, if he could get it. "Someone new in charge there now?"

Zas laughs softly, hiding the sound in Kobra's hair. "You'll love this one."

"Shoot."

"Daddy Longlegs."

Kobra groans, jerking his head away. "Him and his fucking vampires."

"Be nice and don't talk like that when we visit, huh? I need some stuff from him, and from the Doctor."

"Dr. D's not at the Cantina."

"Not Dr. D, baby." Zas kisses the top of his head and moves away. "Dr. Feelgood."

**

Fun Ghoul's the only one waiting at Five Corners. "Jet got clipped with a spike," he says, mounting his bike before Zas or Kobra can get off theirs. "They're holed up in a safehouse waiting to see if it gets infected."

"Where?" Kobra asks, letting his visor fall down over his eyes again and revving the motor.

"Like I'm gonna fucking announce the safehouse coordinates in front of God and this idiot and everybody."

"Where did Jet get hit," Kobra elaborates, biting the words off and grinding his teeth together when he hears Zas snicker.

"Oh. Left side, abdomen. I think he'll be fine."

"Unless it gets infected," Zas says.

"Yeah."

"Cause in that case, he'll die."

Ghoul bangs his own visor down and takes off without another word. Kobra sighs and follows him, letting Zas bring up the rear. He knows without looking back that Zas is laughing hard enough to make his bike swerve. 

He's beautiful, and impossible, and Kobra loves him in a way that doesn't make any sense at all. Thank God nobody's ever asked him to explain it.

The safehouse is a fallen-down ruin, with enough of a basement left to hide out in. It's been dug out farther into the earth since Zonerunners started using the left-behind places; Kobra runs his hand over the place where the neat cinderblock wall gives way to packed dirt and wonders how long it'll last before the desert wears it away completely.

Poison's got Jet Star set up on the only cot in the place, tucked away in the corner of the original basement. His coloring's good, his breathing's steady, and Kobra feels a little bit of the tension knotted up in his chest ease away. Jet's going to make it, he'll be fine. Kobra doesn't have to give anything else back to the desert yet.

Losing that bit of worry means he has attention to spare on keeping Poison from killing Disaster Boy. Zas started running his mouth the minute they parked the bikes, putting his hands on everybody and laughing too loud and sharp. Ghoul's disappeared up to the surface, avoiding the whole situation like an asshole, and Jet's asleep, so Kobra's got to run interference on his own.

"Poison," Zas is saying, tugging at Poison's hair and ignoring his efforts to swat him away. "Party Party. You know you've missed me. It's been a long fucking time."

"I thought you were dead."

"Not even close, baby."

"Yeah, I'm not that lucky."

Kobra sighs and shrugs out of his jacket, tossing it over the back of a chair. "Let's be civil."

"I will if he will." Poison edges away from Zas and drags his hands through his hair, leaving furrows behind in the tangled strands. "Why'd you bring him back with you anyway?"

"I'm joining up with you again," Zas says, his smile getting wider, brighter in the way that makes Kobra wince, because it's not a funny or a happy smile, it's more of a baring-his-teeth-to-bite-somebody kind of thing.

"Over my dead, ghosted, and dusted body you are."

"The two months I spent with you guys were the best of my life, Poison."

"Zas," Kobra says. "Enough."

"I mean it, baby. They started with you and me getting handfasted, after all--"

Kobra steps between them, his back to Poison, and puts his hands on Zas's chest. "Enough."

And Zas deflates a little, tilting his head in acknowledgment. Kobra doesn't know why he has to be this way, what he gets out of it, but there's something, and even if he doesn't understand it, he can work with it.

"You got any water?" Zas asks, his voice lower, more subdued.

"Over there," Kobra says. Zas moves away and Kobra turns around. Poison looks genuinely _annoyed_ on more than the usual level. "Don't let him push your buttons," Kobra tells him, like he's been telling him since the day he met Disaster Boy in the sweaty mess of the grindhouse on the outskirts.

Poison flicks his hair out of his eyes. "He's here because he's not done with you yet, right?" Kobra shrugs. Poison's fondness for rhetorical questions is an old familiar friend. "He's going to drag you off with him into some stupid plan that'll get you killed."

"I'm not going to get killed."

"Ghosted, then. That'll be even better. That's just what I want, to see you end up a mindwiped fucking BLInd drone. That's what all of this has been for, all of this fucking--"

"Enough," Kobra says again. Poison turns away, abrupt and jerky, moving back over to Jet's side, and Kobra forces himself to take a breath, then another, before he goes in the other direction, to where Zas is fumbling with the condenser.

"You don't have to pick and dig at him, you know."

"I do, though." Zas takes a drink and closes his eyes. Kobra wants to rub his thumb over the shadows under them, like he can brush the desert life off Zas's skin and out of his body. "It's the way I'm made."

Kobra sighs and leans against Zas' back. "You want to tell me what the plan is now?"

"I'll tell it to all four of you. So whenever you can round them up."

"Whenever Jet wakes up, then." He runs his fingers along Zas' waist, then kisses the back of his neck. "Why don't you get some sleep? I'll come get you."

Zas glances at him, the corner of his mouth curving up in invitation. "Or you could come lie down with me."

Kobra smiles against his hair. "That wouldn't help with getting the guys rounded up."

"Don't care."

"I do." Kobra steps back, letting his hand drift down to Zas' hip before he pulls it away. "There're some blankets there in the corner."

Zas sketches a salute and moves in that direction, shrugging his jacket off as he goes. Kobra walks over to Poison and Jet, nudging Poison with his hip until he edges over and makes room for Kobra to perch on the edge of his chair.

"He going to be okay?" Kobra asks after a moment, nodding at Jet.

Poison shrugs, resting his chin in his hands. "Think so."

"Did you finish the Circuit run before it happened?"

"Course we fucking did."

"Just asking." Kobra breathes slowly, in and out, matching the pace to Poison's breath. "I'll keep him calmed down."

"He's never calm."

"Why do you hate him so much?"

Poison shrugs again, his eyes still fixed on Jet's face. "He puts you at risk."

"You put me at risk. Every day."

"I know exactly how the risks I ask us to take are calculated. I have no idea what goes on in his head."

Kobra stares down at the floor for a long moment. "Magic, I think."

Poison snorts. "Yeah, you would."

"I'm still alive." He twists the bracelet on his right wrist, the one Disaster Boy tied in place at their handfasting. "Plan to stay that way."

Poison's jaw twitches, like he's biting down on more words. Kobra waits, watching Jet breathe, and after a moment Poison's hand brushes against his, curling their fingers together loosely.

"Glad to hear it," Poison mutters, and Kobra almost smiles.

**

Disaster Boy's plan is terrible.

"You guys as a crew, you're mythic," he says, pacing back and forth at the foot of Jet's cot. "You're legendary. All of the civilians in Battery City are terrified of you."

Ghoul frowns. "Well, that's not the point at all."

"Think about where they get their information. It's not your fault."

"So we're mythic," Poison says, snapping his fingers sharply. "So what?"

"The Fabulous Killjoys." Zas stares off into space for a moment, rubbing his palms against his thighs. Kobra wants to tell him to stop putting on a performance and just talk like a normal person. "You have no idea the kind of power your reputation has."

"We have _some_ idea," Ghoul says.

"Will you guys just shut up and let him talk?" Jet shifts against the wadded-up jackets serving as pillows, wincing. "He's never going to finish if you keep interrupting him."

Zas smiles the smile that Kobra is never quite sure he likes, the one with too many teeth and sharp edges. "Thanks, brother. It’s a lot more simple than they’re making it out to be."

"We’re not making it out to be anything," Poison says. "You haven’t--"

"I’ve already started the first whispers in Battery City," Zas says, clasping his hands behind his back. "I’m getting packages together for the radio and then to jack into the vidscreen grids in the city. If you guys will cooperate and drop out of sight for a while, not more than a month, probably three weeks would be plenty, just enough for me to get it all up and running, I can manipulate the public into being sure that you guys are coming to burn the whole city to the ground."

"And S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W into bracing for riots." Poison clicks his tongue against his teeth, staring down at the floor.

"You said before that this wasn't a targeted run at Korse," Kobra says cautiously, watching Zas’ face. "Was that an honest statement?"

Zas shrugs. "When the people start to panic, he’s going to have to make an appearance. Make a big deal, take a stand, posture a lot. Swing his dick."

"And?" Ghoul prompts.

Zas rolls his eyes. "And what do you think, fuckhead? Nothing happens. You guys aren’t coming. Doubt starts to creep in. How omnipotent is BLInd if the Fabulous Killjoys can plan a raid on the city? Not much. How omnipotent is it if it cracks down for a raid that doesn’t happen? Even less."

There’s silence for a moment, just long enough for Kobra to contemplate the taste of his own tension in his mouth (sickly, metallic) and listen to everyone breathe.

"Fucking stupid," Ghoul says finally.

"It’ll never work," Poison says.

"What exactly are the people who count on us in the Zones supposed to be doing while we're lying low and you're using our names to stir shit up?" Jet asks.

Zas blinks. "You guys do stuff for people?"

"What the fuck do _you_ do with your time, Disaster Boy?" Poison snaps.

"Jack off in the faces of arrogant pricks who think they walk on fucking air and their shit doesn't stink like everybody else."

Kobra closes his eyes as Poison stands up fast enough that his chair clatters to the floor. He cannot fucking deal with this right now. He turns and hauls himself up the ladder into the night air. Poison needs to fuss and scream and that's fine. Kobra already knows he's going with Zas, and they all know it too, the same way they know anything.

**

Poison comes up and finds him a while later, when he's given up walking laps around the perimeter and is sitting on the hood of the Trans Am, scraping the dust off his boots onto the bumper.

"Get off the car." There's no heat in Poison's voice, just weary habit.

"Nowhere else to sit."

"So stand."

"It's late." Kobra tilts his head and looks up at the stars, so bright out here away from the lights of Battery City, glittering with the sharp-edged light that means after-sundown cold.

"Trying to tell me you're tired?" It's an old game; if Poison could summon energy for anything it should be for this, but his voice stays flat and weary.

Kobra shifts over on the hood, making room for Poison to join him. "Killjoys don't get tired."

"Killjoys never stop running."

Kobra squints out at the horizon. He doesn't need the glasses now, but he doesn't know how to guard his eyes without them, anymore. "I don't want the pep talk, please."

"Right." They're quiet for a while, sitting in the slow-deepening cold. "Ghoul's helping Zas with some riot stuff."

"Great."

"There's no way I can talk you out of this?" Poison exhales sharply when Kobra shakes his head. "He doesn't _need_ you."

"He does." Poison doesn't get it, and that's all right. Kobra knows.

"You know if this goes bad, if they catch you..."

"Don't."

"They're going to make you be who they want you to be." The words hit the night hard. Kobra imagines he can see little puffs of dust rising up from the ground with every one. "Who the databases say you are."

"I was never who they wanted me to be, even before we left." He remembers--of course he remembers, he's never even tried to forget. There's no point. It was what was, and now it is what it is--he is who he is--ID cards and BLInd records and the DNA fingerprints lying in the computers like ghosts don't _mean_ anything out here.

"They'll drug you into it." Poison can't ever stop. It's something Kobra loves about him, except when he doesn't understand. "They'll unmake you."

"They can't." If he says it often enough, his brother, his best friend, he'll have to get it. If Kobra doesn't stop either. "I'd rather be out here, but even if they get me, they can't unmake me. It's who I am, not...not a switch they can flip."

Poison exhales in frustration, the heel of his hand coming down hard on the hood of the car.

"I need to do this," Kobra says softly, picturing his own words throwing off trails of light. Blaster beams under the stars. Loyalty to who and what he loves: it was the first lesson he learned out here, and the one he's not ever going to compromise on. If anybody can understand that, it's Poison.

They're quiet for a while, again. Poison's next words are halting and sharp. "I don't want you to get turned into one of their drones."

"I won't."

"I don't want my brother to die. If you die out here, you're still you, you're still mine, that's forever. If it's back there...if they take everything _away_..."

Kobra finds Poison's hand, prying it from its grip on the hem of his jacket. Poison fights him, curling his fingers tighter against his palm, but Kobra pries them back one by one until he can thread them with his, holding on, letting it hurt.

"You taught me to be brave," he says when Poison takes a shaky breath and his grip eases just a fraction. "You did." Poison huffs softly and shakes his head, and Kobra bumps his knee against his. "So let me."

Poison takes another breath and turns his head, spitting out into the dust. "We're going to dig in and hide tomorrow," he says, his voice flat and careful. "Disaster Boy agreed to hire on a crew at the Cantina to cover our runs."

"The Cantina? He thinks we'll find anybody good there?"

"We couldn't get him to promise it would be anybody good." Poison frees his hand and runs it through his hair, sliding down off the hood. "See what you can do, though, huh? That's our reputation he's fucking with."

**

They don't say goodbye before they leave, and Kobra doesn't bother setting up a rendezvous with the others. The timeframe they're working with is too long. When the mission's over, he'll either track them down or he won't. 

Disaster Boy's quiet the whole trip, even when they stop to hydrate and check the airwaves. Kobra doesn't press him, just waits, scanning the horizons out of habit that goes so deep it's reflex. Twice each direction, focus on land first and then sky.

"Any Blackbirds?" Zas asks on their third stop, when the sky's starting to darken to bruise-purple and Kobra imagines he can feel the cold getting ready to crawl out of the mountains like a wave of spiders over the desert.

"No." Kobra glances at him from the corner of his eye, safely guarded by his sunglasses, and catches the exact moment Zas' lips start moving in the rhyme. Neither of them were Zone kids, but they've both heard it enough times over the years. Stupid shit like that gets taught to kids because it's the best way to remember how to stay alive.

_Hold your breath when the Blackbird flies, count to seventeen and close your eyes..._

Twelve seconds for one of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W's planes to make it from horizon to horizon, the distance the average person could see out here in burned-flat nothing. Make it a count of seventeen to allow for panic, if you weren't safe inside or underground after dark and you saw that glimmer of light come over the horizon too fast to outrun.

"Run, run, bunny, run," Zas sings, low and flat and off-key. "Speaking of which. We'd better."

Kobra throws his leg over his bike again, wincing as the stiff joint protests the move. "Who you calling a bunny?"

Zas almost smiles. "You've got the cute little nose."

"Fucking liar."

"Well, you don't have a tail, so I've gotta find something to compliment." Zas pulls his helmet down and revs the engine, his thumb brushing over the solar plate that's going to do exactly fuck-all good now. Kobra figures they have an hour's hard riding left to reach the Cantina; they both have plenty of juice providing no Dracs show up.

Part of him wants to be a Molotov in the mix, gun his engine and take off into the night, get Zas to chase him until both their bikes fall down dead in the sand. Steal one night just for them, out in the cold under the stars, and get back to the grand architecture of the plan tomorrow.

Zas kicks his brake back and takes off down Route Guano. Kobra follows, because he missed his shot and dreams like that can't live in the desert anyway.

**

They reach the Cantina well after full dark, no moon to light the way up the path that's scraped down to cracked, dead earth, with steel plates every twenty yards or so. Sneaking up on the Cantina's a bitch, of course. It's designed that way.

Kobra keeps his head down as they pull up into the bike yard, not letting himself study the row of guns mounted on the building's roof. Where the fuck Daddy Longlegs got that much firepower is a question nobody wants to dig into too deeply; all anybody knows is that the previous proprietor of the establishment didn't have anything of the kind, and that he was replaced in about the three days it took Dr. Death-Defying and Show Pony to make it from one broadcast station to another.

Zas kicks down his bike's stand and pulls his helmet off, waving to the watchman up at the guns. "Hey, beautiful, come down and give us a kiss."

"Oh, it's you." The watchman spits off the edge of the roof and Kobra flinches slightly. "Who's your friend?"

Zas gestures extravagantly. "The Kobra Kid, big as life and twice as pretty."

"Twice as ugly."

"Don't insult my life partner that way."

"It's the saying, moron." The watchman's leaning on the top rail of the ladder now, squinting at them in the sickly yellow courtyard lights. "Big as life and twice as ugly. And Kobra Kid only runs with his crew. You're no Killjoy."

"That's true," Zas says, easing off the bike. "I prefer to bring a party up, not down. And I'm not at all fabulous."

"Fucker." The watchman spits again, and Kobra holds back a sigh as he pulls off his own helmet. "Oh. So it is you."

Kobra sketches a salute and a shrug. What else is he supposed to do?

"Your guys okay? They didn't actually exterminate the Killjoys, did they?" The watchman's fingers tap restlessly against the railing. "Shit. Did they? Fucking S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W fucks."

"If they had, I'd be gone with 'em." Now it's Kobra's turn to spit, despite himself. The dust was awful. "Wouldn't leave them behind."

"Good point." The watchman leans on the railing while they lock up the bikes and move toward the entrance. "You looking for the boss?"

"If he has the time," Zas says with a meaningful look. "I'm not sure I'm still entertaining after last time, but I hope he'll find it in his heart to see us."

"Don't try to suck exhaust, man, you know he's been waiting for you."

Disaster Boy laughs and slides his arm around Kobra's waist. Kobra considers elbowing him in the stomach. "So buzz down that we're here, and tell him he should find us when he's ready." Zas' fingers brush down over the front of Kobra's jeans, and he closes his eyes tightly. Always has to put on a show. "In the meantime, I'm going to buy my man a drink."

"The boss appreciates your patronage," the watchman says dryly, moving back over to his guns and the radio. "Drink up, just pay your tab before you leave."

"Fucking civilians," Zas says as they move into the entryway, suddenly blind as the door slams behind them and cuts off the light. 

"Vampires. Your friend Longlegs is the _king_ of the vampires, I have to point out." Kobra's fingers twitch against the butt of his gun. He hates this part, stuck in the dark before security decides to let them through into the main building and the lights. "So if you need him so bad, you might want to hold the insults."

"He's proud of being a vampire." There's a faint click and the inner doors slide open, revealing the buzzing, well-lit chaos of the Cantina. It's the closest thing to a safe community space any Zonerunner's going to find out here. 

"Suck life out of everybody in the Zones, don't give anything back." Kobra forces himself to let go of his gun and step forward, ignoring the way every eye in the room is on him and Zas. "Sounds like something to be proud of, yeah."

"Don't be petty." Zas' fingers brush over the back of Kobra's hand, not quite taking hold, and Kobra doesn't turn his wrist to catch them. "Let's get a drink and wait for Longlegs to get to us. Blow off a little steam."

Kobra closes his eyes for a moment, pressing his teeth into his tongue until he can let go of the urge to snap at him. He hates holding still, but that doesn't mean he has to lash out. He can handle one night.

"No gambling," he says finally, opening his eyes and turning to follow Zas to the bar.

"Not this time," Zas agrees wistfully. "There's nobody here I can play with anymore without losing an eye."

**

Kobra closes his eyes and tilts his head back to drain the last drops from his glass. The booze is terrifying; Longlegs and his boys distill it themselves in the basement of the Cantina. Nobody knows what goes into it except those shifty-eyed, smirky fucks.

Kobra’s had a few rounds now. There’s an edge to his thoughts that wasn’t there before, and a layer of blurry fog wrapped over it. He remembers the bars and grindhouses at the edge of Battery City, the filthy fucked-up holes where he and Disaster Boy met. They didn’t drink there, but they took pills by the fistful. Everything that slipped through the BLInd net wound up there, on the outskirts, sliding down the throats and through the veins of rage rats. It made him feel a little bit like this, only lighter. Like he was walking on light, flying, not tied down in the muscles and bones of a body that seems to think it needs to find a place to piss.

He never thought he’d miss the Battery City days, not really. The outskirts were a lot more simple than this, though. Sleep through the day, burn through the night, chase as much pleasure as you could and hope this time the crash might kill you. Simple.

He pushes the glass away and gets to his feet, moving carefully through the crowd. Nobody tries to stop him, though he can feel the eyes on him. A Killjoy away from his brothers; it had to mean something, had to be a sign.

He can hear Zas’s voice somewhere in the mess of people, raised too loud. He wonders if whoever Zas is talking to is watching Kobra, too. If Zas will answer their questions.

The john at the Cantina is set up to collect for recycling and purification. A hand-painted sign reminds customers not to piss on the floor or the walls unless they want the standard punishment for wasting water. Kobra can’t remember what that is, exactly, but he has a suspicion it involves electricity or sharp sticks. Something unpleasant, anyway.

The lights are dim in the bathroom, shaded weirdly blue, and when he steps back into the main room, the colors and raw yellow lights make him flinch and squint, ducking his chin so his hair will fall over his eyes.

Fingers brush over his shoulder, light and careful enough that he stops himself before he fully draws his gun.

"Easy." The voice is light and amused, but not quite mocking. Kobra takes a deep breath and turns his head to find his host standing there, Daddy Longlegs of the skinny limbs and lank, sun-stripped hair, smiling faintly as Kobra takes him in.

"We don’t see you very often," Longlegs says after a moment. "Not fabulous enough for the Killjoys, I suppose."

"This isn’t our usual territory." Kobra hates pointing out things that everyone knows; that’s Poison’s job, to do this kind of dance, but Poison isn’t here, and there isn’t a person alive in the Zones who doesn’t know that Longlegs demands the full routine before he’ll lift his spindly fingers to help.

"True. It’s good to have you, anyway." He laughs, bright and clear, a sound that doesn’t quite fit with the Zones Kobra knows. He’s never sure if Longlegs’ existence is comforting or distressing like that. "Come sit with me. Have a drink."

Kobra scans the room, looking for Zas’ ugly damn jacket or his head above the crowd. No sign of him. "I should..."

"He’s gone up on watch with the boys," Longlegs says. "I think he’s hoping to shoot something."

Of course he was. "Oh."

"Join me for a drink." Longlegs takes his elbow and steers him toward a table in the corner. "I insist."

**

Kobra can be dragged to a table, and he can be made to drink, but he can't be forced to be sociable. He and Longlegs have been sitting in silence for two glasses each, now.

Longlegs licks the rim of his glass and sets it down. "You don't like me."

"I don't dislike you."

"But you don't like me."

Kobra shrugs. "I don't like very many people."

"Your fellow Killjoys. Disaster Boy. The Joker." Kobra doesn't--quite--react to that, and Longlegs smiles, leaning back in his chair. "Your mother, presumably."

Kobra's fingers twitch against the table top, and he shrugs. "Your point?"

"Isn't one, really." Longlegs sighs and looks across the room, tracking the movement of two new arrivals from the door to the bar. "I'm trying to make conversation and you're not cooperating."

"I'm tired." Kobra's as surprised as Longlegs by that response. He is tired, but it's not the kind of thing a Zonerunner admits if they want to keep breathing. Goddamn basement brew. Goddamn Cantina, with its myth of safety in the walls.

"Of course." Longlegs is looking at him more closely, brow furrowed slightly. "Of course you are. I'm sorry. I didn't think."

"It's fine." Kobra lifts his empty glass, signaling for another, and watches the door. "I'll wait for Zas to come back."

"Zas." Longlegs smiles slightly, leaning forward again, his elbows on the table. "Is it true the two of you are handfasted?"

Kobra's gaze jerks from the door to Longlegs' face. "He didn't..."

"He says you are not a topic for discussion. He's pretty firm on that." Longlegs shrugs, a slight roll of bony shoulders. "Collecting rumors is sort of what I do, you know? Collecting and collating."

"And brewing alcohol."

"And trading fuel. Yes. It takes a lot to make a life out here."

"You don't have to tell me." Kobra takes a sip of his new drink and rubs slow circles between his eyes. Apparently maintaining a dislike of Daddy Longlegs is going to be harder than expected. Little shit. "So he comes here often?"

"Fairly regularly. I wouldn't say often." Longlegs shrugs and picks at the edge of the table. "He sweeps in for a night or two, makes things exciting, usually shifts half of his bill to comped or credit, always leaves at sunrise."

Kobra smiles a little and drinks, remembering Disaster Boy's lips against his in the blurry morning half-light. "Superstitious."

"About his gambling, too." Longlegs smiles a little, shaking his head. "I can see why you chose him."

"More like we chose each other." Nights in outskirt clubs with more chemicals than blood in their veins. The night Poison told Kobra he was going into the desert to see what he could find, and Kobra could stay or follow. (Not Kobra, then. Not Poison. He's careful not to think of the old names, the old faces. They can't exist anymore; they could never survive out here.)

Longlegs is still smiling, looking out over the floor like he's seeing something else. "That's how we all get out here, isn't it? We choose it and it chooses us."

Kobra can't think of anything to say to that. It's true. You only survive in the desert if it wants you there, too. 

"Were the two of you a team, then?" Longlegs asks, cutting a glance at Kobra through his lashes. Kobra hides his face behind his glass for a moment, wishing Longlegs was a runner instead of a vampire, because then he might understand things like not asking about the past.

"No."

"Not just the two of you, I guess. Did he run with the Killjoys?"

"No." Kobra rubs the base of his glass against the table, watching the condensation slip from the glass and vanish into the air. "He had a crew of his own. A long time ago. He's been alone for...well. A long time." 

(The toast of the outskirts, young and stupid and on fire with what they believed, sure they could change things, change the world, make the outskirts into a world of their own that wasn't scraped pale like Battery City or built on bones like the desert. They called themselves Townies, outskirt princes, knights who answered to no one. Dressed in black and red, promising things, believing things, and some of them did believe, Kobra who wasn't Kobra yet believed, a little, before--)

"I had no idea." Longlegs' eyes are wide now, and he leans in closer, his fingers brushing eagerly along the sleeve of Kobra's jacket. Kobra wants to flinch away, some part of his mind that's still young and living _before_ wailing about the danger of letting vampires and scarecrows touch you, how they'll drain you dry or turn you to empty skin. "What happened to them?"

There's only ever one answer to that question. Well. Two, but they mean the same thing. Kobra finishes his glass and blinks at Longlegs slowly.

Longlegs draws his hand back to himself, dropping his gaze in what might be an apology. "All of them?"

"Two dead, one ghosted." (Remember that, don't forget, remember Disaster Boy's face, who wasn't Disaster Boy yet, but remember his face when they stood there in the street in the outskirts and a friend walked by who wasn't a friend anymore, wiped clean and white, dressed in BLInd standard, eyes wide and unseeing, a new name for an old face and Disaster Boy kept saying the old name, over and over until his voice broke.)

(Kobra and Poison left the next day. They weren't Kobra and Poison yet. But it didn't take long.)

"Is that why he doesn't stay with you?"

Kobra blinks again, forcing the memories back behind his eyes. "What?"

"Why he runs alone, I mean. Why he doesn't have a crew. Is it because of the one he lost?"

Kobra pushes his glass away, then his chair back, getting unsteadily to his feet. So much for waiting for Zas. "He doesn't stay with me because he doesn't want to. Can someone show me where we're crashing?"

**

The Cantina swaps and trades enough energy to run lights in all of its rooms. It has a warren of sleeping spaces to rent, and Kobra's tired enough and rattled enough now to take the first one offered, even though it's two levels down under the earth and the idea's enough to make him feel trapped on a good day.

The room is the same size as the one they slept in at Joker's, fitted with a lamp and a cot, a blue blanket folded neatly at one end. Kobra undresses, stripping down to bare skin just because he can. It's dangerous and strange, a challenge to himself. He so badly wants to win.

There's a jug of water by the door, helpfully marked with a gray square of tape so he knows not to drink it. He dips his fingers in and drags them back through his hair, letting it hold itself back off his face. He's tired and he's drunk and it's too quiet in this room, the earth swallowing up the noise from the other floors. He knows he won't be able to sleep, but at least he can be on-edge and unhappy alone instead of in a barroom.

He lies facedown on the cot, tugs the blanket loosely across his legs, and closes his eyes, willing himself to stay here in the present instead of drifting into the past again. Focus on the scrape of canvas against his skin, and the whisper of the polymers making up the blanket. Note the way his breath rasps just slightly in his lungs, burned with sand and heat. Wonder about Poison and Jet and Ghoul, probably moved to a new safehouse by now, hopefully holed up and resting the way they never get a chance to. And think about Zas, what he's doing at this moment and with this plan, which parts of the story he told the Killjoys as a group were real and which were covers, or evasions, or flat lies.

He breathes, and he waits, and he doesn't quite sleep but he drifts in the pleasant gray space just before it until the door creaks open and Disaster Boy comes inside.

Kobra turns his head, watching Zas do the lock up and shrug out of his jacket. "Get what you needed?" he asks softly, slipping his palm under his cheek to cushion it against the canvas.

"He's going to take me to see Dr. Feelgood tomorrow." Zas' movements are blurred and careful, a little too precise in the way that Kobra recognizes as compensating for pills or booze. "Hopefully won't take more than two days to get it all together."

"What about the crew to cover for my guys?"

"He thinks he has a lead for me. I'll talk to them tomorrow. Some kids call themselves Hell's Heroes." He sits down on the edge of the cot to kick his boots off, and Kobra closes his eyes, his stomach lurching as the frame sways.

"Kids?"

"Younger than us, anyway." He stands and Kobra opens his eyes again, watching as he pulls his shirt over his head and starts to shed his jeans. Kobra's eyes move up and down the lines of his body, re-learning and memorizing, recognizing what's always been there. "Longlegs vouches for them, though."

"You trust him."

"Yeah." He tosses his clothes on top of Kobra's, letting them mingle into a mass of dirt, cotton, leather, and polymer. "You don't?"

"I'm never sure."

"Killjoys don't trust anybody." Zas shoots him a smile, small and crooked and not like him at all. "Except me, right?"

"Don't." Kobra shifts onto his back and puts his arm over his eyes, fitting his nose into the crook of his elbow so he can breathe and not see. "I don't want to play games tonight."

"I don't either, baby." The cot creaks and shifts again as Zas lies down, his fingers brushing lightly against Kobra's side. 

"You're lying to me," Kobra says softly, and Zas's hand goes still.

"I'm not."

"Keeping things from me."

There's a pause that says too much. "Only a little bit."

Kobra breathes in and out, digs his teeth against his lower lip, forces himself to keep his voice steady and low. "Until when?"

"Let me talk to the Doc." Zas' hand settles on Kobra's chest, over his heart. "Once I'm sure everything I came up with as spec is actually going to work. Then I'll tell you everything. I promise."

_Are you going to get yourself killed?_ Kobra thinks, and _are you going to make me watch you die?_ , and _if I have to see you empty-eyed and answering to a number I will burn the city down, I mean it, the whole city and all of its memories._

He turns his head and kisses Zas instead, deep and hungry, trying to say with his body what he can't, can't ever, say out loud. Saying it out loud would kill it. It could never survive out here in the desert, either. It's too soft a thing.

"Don't be scared," Zas says. Kobra shakes his head, letting the _don't tell me what to do_ retort come from his fingers against Zas's chest, over his heart.

They kiss for a while in the dark, hands sliding carefully on each other's skin, staying in the safe places. Feeling him like this, breathing in time, Kobra can't believe that Zas actually is willing to die. There's something else going on here, something still blurry in outline that he can't make snap into focus.

"Can I go down on you?" Zas whispers, and Kobra's heart jerks in his chest, pushing painfully against his ribs. 

"Yeah," he says, tangling his fingers in the blanket as Zas kisses him again and then moves. "Yeah, I think--yeah, I want--yeah."

Disaster Boy's mouth is hot and steady, and he moves slow and patient, giving Kobra time to gasp and shake and keep his mind down the center gauge, right on target, not slipping into the gray zones. He knows he's breathing too loud, too ragged, despite his concentration, and he thinks that's okay. Zas's hand slides up his side, fumbles blindly until it finds Kobra's own and laces their fingers together, squeezing gently. Yeah. It is okay, then, when the air in his throat chokes and stutters, when his feet jerk against the canvas, when he whispers _please_ as lights go off behind his eyes.

It's something that matters, another piece of their puzzle that nobody else understands. Disaster Boy's way of saying that soft, small thing. 

**

In the morning, Daddy Longlegs waves them over to join him again at his table. He pours them each a glass of water and smirks at Disaster Boy. "Hangovers are a bitch, aren't they?"

"Quiet." Zas drinks, eyes closed, his free hand resting on Kobra's thigh under the table. "Can we see the Doc today?"

"You're on his schedule for this afternoon. You can brief the Heroes whenever they show up this morning, and one of my staff will come find you when the Doc is ready."

Zas smiles and shakes his head. "Your staff. So civilized, even out here in the dirt."

"Someone has to be."

"Not true." Zas squeezes gently and lets go of Kobra, rubbing his eyes instead. "But I admire your dedication."

They settle into silence, and Kobra lets his gaze track around the room, studying the faces and weapons in the room, letting his eyes graze over the old notices on the walls. "What did you do with the hospital?" he asks abruptly, catching Longlegs mid-swallow.

He coughs and rubs his chest, blinking at Kobra in surprise. "Sorry?"

"The med facility that used to be here. Before you took it over. The one downstairs."

Longlegs blinks again, his gaze sliding to Zas for a moment. "I didn't realize that was common knowledge."

"They patched me up once or twice." Cut him up once, patched him up that time and one other. "It was a good place to have."

"I'm sure it was." Longlegs swirls his glass slowly, watching the water rise and fall against the sides. "But an infirmary's not much good without a doctor." He makes a face. "A medical doctor, not the other kind. Why did they start calling themselves that, anyway? Half of the DJs and techies want to be doctors, the other half are just pretentious."

"Everybody wants to be like Death-Defying." Zas smiles and takes Kobra's hand under the table, squeezing gently. Kobra half wants to snap at him, tell him he doesn't need his reassurance, Zas wasn't even _here_ when Kobra was, he was off...doing whatever. Kobra can never remember the dates and years, how it all fits together. Time works differently out here. 

"Can you still find the graves?" Kobra asks instead, looking to Longlegs. His face is guarded now, his eyes on the table top.

"If you know where to look. The headstones are still there."

Massacres weren't memorable in the Zones, but the loss of what the Cantina could have been before it was the Cantina...that was something that had to be remembered.

"I wonder if we were in the same room last night," Kobra says, tapping his fingers against the table just where Longlegs' gaze fell. "The one I was in while I recovered from my surgery here. What do you think?"

"There's no way to know." Longlegs gets to his feet, taking his glass and the water pitcher. "I'll have the Heroes woken up and sent to you. Excuse me."

Zas takes a measured sip and squeezes Kobra's hand again. "What did you do that for?"

"Sometimes he needs to remember he's a vampire."

"He does give something back, you know. A place to exchange information, a _safe_ place, that's--"

"Safe?" Kobra shakes his head and drains his own glass. "It got shot up once, it could happen again. Easy. Don't kid yourself into thinking it's safe."

"Paranoia isn't pretty, Kid."

"Neither am I."

"Not true."

Kobra exhales and looks at him out of the corner of his eye, around the edge of his glasses. "You're impossible."

"Somebody has to be." Zas lifts his chin and smiles as four figures shuffle through the door from the stairway, still sleep-ruffled and looking confused. "There are the kiddos who are going to be Killjoys for a while. Wave and make nice."

Hell's Heroes are kind of a high-strung bunch, and Kobra doesn't understand half of the words that come out of the leader's mouth, but their bona fides check out and it's not like they can do much damage by covering the Killjoys' standard runs for a month.

"No more than that," Zas assures them, smiling wide enough that sane men would flinch. They don't. They're Zonerunners. "If it takes longer than that, we're definitely dead."

"You going to kill Korse?" the short one asks, chewing slowly at a scrap of plastic. 

"Not answering that question at this time," Zas says, which isn't anything close to what Kobra wants to hear. 

The short one shrugs. "No other reason I can think of to go back into Battery City."

"We miss the shopping," Kobra says, and they all stare at him blankly. It occurs to him a beat too late that they might have been born out here.

"I'm gonna get platform boots and latex pants," Zas says, resting his chin on Kobra's shoulder. "It'll be awesome."

"Latex pants wouldn't survive a bike skid," the one with flat, distant eyes says.

"You haven't seen my bike. Neither would I." Zas kisses behind Kobra's ear and gets to his feet. "Let the Kid brief you on your routes and duties while I go have a word with my friend upstairs, and then we'll talk about payment."

The leader watches him walk away, then looks at Kobra. "His friend upstairs?"

"The watchman, I assume." Kobra shrugs. "He needs air."

"Not going to get much of that in the City."

"Luckily we're not going for a vacation." Kobra sighs and gestures for the short one to hand him the scrap of metal with the basic Zone map scratched on it. "So these days we're doing a standard patrol in Three..."

**

Dr. Feelgood is a data collector. "Not music," he says, waving his hands at the racks and racks of data discs, old-school film, jump drives, and every other data storage unit Kobra can recognize that pack the room from table to ceiling. "Audio-visual, and straight-up data." 

The room's two floors underground and Kobra doesn't understand how he can even _breathe_ down here, but the setup is beyond impressive. 

"I've got sources on the streets in Battery City," the Doc goes on, turning his chair in a slow circle. "I've got sources in BLInd itself. You want it, I can get it."

"But it'll cost us." Zas is smiling. Kobra knows this whole routine is for his benefit, not Zas's; Zas and the Doc have the rapport of old friends. It makes Kobra look at the Doc closer, try to see under his skin and bones into what makes him click and tick, what keeps his engine spinning.

"Of course it'll cost you. Don't think the pretty faces will get you a discount, either."

"Not on Longlegs' property." Zas smirks and grabs a chair of his own, spinning it so he can straddle the back. "I've got most of the stuff I need on a jump already, I just need you to patch it together and make it look good. And by good I mean kinda shitty. Make it look like what they _think_ a package put together out here would look like."

"I could make it look good enough to pass for one of theirs."

"I know. But that's not what I need them to see."

The Doc frowns a little, grabbing a tablet from the table and snapping his fingers at Zas. "Give me the jump. Who's your source?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Maybe I know them already."

"Maybe you don't and they end up getting ghosted and I feel like shit."

"You cry all over my nice clean desk."

"And then BLInd knows who I am and how to find me and that just sucks ass, man."

Kobra closes his eyes, listening to the back-and-forth that's so much like it was in the Joker's tower. There's the same sinking sensation of disconnect, like this isn't about him at all even though Zas insists he wants him there. There's still the gaps in what he knows--the endgame being the biggest one. What is Zas really doing? What does he really want?

"Does your friend want a chair?" the Doc asks, and Kobra opens his eyes again, watching the pale reflection of the screen on the Doc's face. "He doesn't have to stand over there in the corner like he's got the crawlies."

"He's clean as a whistle." Zas blows a kiss over his shoulder and Kobra shakes his head, shifting his weight and leaning more heavily against the wall. He shouldn't be here. "Don't disparage my husband, man."

"Husband." The Doc's eyebrows go up a little, though his eyes don't leave the screen. "So I've got the one and only Kobra Kid down here in my studio. Shit. Forget giving him a chair, I should be pouring drinks."

"They took care of that upstairs," Kobra murmurs. "And there aren't any other chairs."

"I'll send the punk here to get one. Making you stand while he sits here being a pain in my ass. You want to leave him and live out here with me, just say the word, Kid."

Kobra has to smile, and doesn't bother to hide it even when Zas makes a face at him. "I'm flattered, but you don't even know me."

"Keeps things exciting." The Doc nods and sets the tablet down, waving his hand at Zas. "I'm not kidding. Go get him a chair. Look down the hall in the storage room, and if you can't find one, go up to the bar. I've got manners even if you don't."

"So you get the chair."

"I'm trying to figure out this mess you gave me. This is not clean data. This is going to have to be ripped, recoded, cleaned up and then dirtied again the way you want them to see it. It's gonna take me all fucking night, and I can get started on that or I can get your pretty piece of ass over there a chair. Your pick."

"Watch your mouth when you're talking about my man, Doc."

"No, it's okay." Kobra shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets. "I am a pretty piece of ass. And if you don't get me a chair, I might take him up on his offer."

"Ganged up on. I see how it is." Zas dismounts his chair with surprising grace and stalks out of the room. Kobra closes his eyes and sighs, but smiles to himself. This is core-normal. This is the way they are.

"Go ahead and take his chair," Doc says, digging through a drawer of cables and drives. "I'll bet you just about anything he gets distracted and doesn't come back for an hour."

"He's pretty set on this project." Kobra settles into the chair and swings his feet up onto a clean spot of the desk. "You really think you can get something put together that'll fool BLInd?"

"Can your boy Poison shoot straight?"

Kobra rubs the heel of his boot against the edge of the desk. "That's actually not the best example you could come up with."

Doc snorts and pulls out the drive he needs. "I can do it. And the chips for your IDs you'll need to get you past the scanners. And probably more, if I know my Disaster Boy and all the layers his plan's got that he hasn't told us about yet."

"Scanners are gonna be a bitch."

"Nah. Not that bad."

"As long as we don't have to get through an iris or fingerprint scanner." Kobra twists his hips, swiveling the chair back and forth. "If we hit one of those, I'm fucked."

Doc glances at him out of the corner of his eye. "You were in custody? Shit. I knew you boys were wanted _now_ , but I didn't think any of you had records on the inside."

"No. Not custody."

"You worked for them? I thought you'd been out here since you were a little skinny-ass thing."

"Didn't work for them either, no. And I don't know if that was a compliment or not, man."

"We'll say it was." Doc grins and slides Zas' flash drive into a port. "And now you've gotta tell me. Don't be a tease."

Kobra shrugs, looking up at the ceiling. "Nothing exciting like being in custody. When I was a kid, I had bad lungs. Fume-burned, all that shit. We were Lower City, you know?"

Doc nods, squinting at his tablet again. "So you were a rat?"

"I was every kind of rat." Kobra smiles a little, worrying his teeth against his lower lip. "When I was nine, it got so bad I couldn't...I mean, I was gonna die. That was just...I was gonna die, full stop."

Doc doesn't look at him this time. "BLInd gave you new lungs?"

"Mm." Kobra rubs his chest through the thin fabric of his t-shirt, tracing the web of scars. He doesn't keep track of which of them came from what, how old any of them are; they're all part of him, made him who he is. But right now he imagines he feels some of them throbbing, and he can see the whiteness of the medical facility, how everything was so white it _glowed_. The doctors and nurses glowed, too, leaning over and saying to breathe deep, count to ten...

"What did they sell?"

Kobra lets his hand settle over his heart. That's his. That's never been touched. "Last time my brother and I saw our dad was when I went in for the surgery."

Doc hums softly. It sounds like sympathy. "Ghosted and Dracced?"

"Probably. We'll never know." It hurts in the back of his throat, saying that. It's hurt for a long time, though. Easy enough to push away.

"So if you get caught..." Doc pauses to tap his tablet again, then glances over at Kobra. "And they ID you, then what?"

"If I'm caught I'm dead one way or another. If I'm ID'd, it just means they might repossess my lungs instead of shooting me."

"That's a shitty way to die."

"Tell me about it." Like that isn't one of his recurrent nightmares, waking up gasping for air and looking down expecting to see a gaping hole where his chest should be. "But if they ID me and don't catch me, they might cross-ref to my brother, too, and there's a whole lot of shit they can do with that. So I need to dodge the scans."

"Hopefully Zas has that built into his plan."

Kobra clears his throat and looks to the door. He doesn't want to have to ask Zas if he thought about that at all.

**

Dr. Feelgood is as good as his word. The footage he puts together almost has Kobra convinced himself that the Fabulous Killjoys are coming to raid Battery City and send everything to chaos and hell. 

There are five separate files they'll deploy around the city, letting them go viral from the clubs and info jacks. If everything goes according to plan, the fifth one will be what pushes S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W to act, with a public statement they can use from there to make them look stupid.

Kobra leans back in his chair and listens to Disaster Boy ramble on about that to the Doc, his hands waving and his voice rising as he goes. It's kind of a shock, low and cold in Kobra's belly, to realize that he doesn't believe any of it now. 

He watches Zas pocket the drives with the Killjoy files, the scanner patches, and something Doc wants them to drop off with one of his contacts, which is how they're paying him back for all of this. That could be a trap, for all Kobra knows. Suddenly he's tired, and he aches, and he can't believe he ever trusted any of this at all. He can't believe he told the Doc anything about himself, his past, what lives in his chest.

He stands up and bolts for the door, shoving his chair back hard enough that it shrieks against the tile and then clatters against it. He can't breathe down here anymore. Under the ground, no air, no light and wind to peel back skin and expose the bones of the lies. He can't take it.

He blows through the bar without stopping, the conversational buzz of the Cantina a meaningless roar under the pounding of his heart in his ears. _Out. Out. Get out._

On the other side of all that he sort of hears someone shouting after him, Longlegs or maybe Zas himself, but he doesn't stop. He hurries through the vestibule and out into the searing light and heat of the day, dodging around an incoming gang. The Hell's Heroes kids are working on their bikes, stripped down to their shorts in the sun and singing some outskirts club song one of the DJs scavenged. They look up as Kobra passes, the music dying out.

He gets to his own bike and kicks the stand out of the way, hitting the panel over and over until the engine stutters to life. His heart is going faster now, racing enough that he can't breathe, that all he can do is try to get out of here, past the fence and out where there's nothing but desert and wind and death and he'll be _safe_.

**

Zas catches him five miles out and almost wrecks both their bikes doing it. 

Kobra's used to Dracs trying to put him into a skid, but not someone he knows, and definitely not someone he knows who didn't bother to put on a helmet or jacket before he took off across the desert. Disaster Boy, the suicide king.

Kobra finally brakes and lets Zas swing around in front of him, his bike crosswise to the road as if that really blocks Kobra's way, as if he can't just head out over the dust. Zas is breathing hard, his sunglasses sliding off his nose and his hair flying in a wild mess. There might actually be a bit of tumbleweed caught in it in the back. Kobra isn't quite sure, because it's hard to look too closely at Zas's hair while Zas is swearing at him this much.

"What the fucking fuck, Kid?"

Kobra toes down the kickstand on his bike and slides off, walking out into the desert. Zas follows him, of course, grabbing at his shoulders and then the back of his jacket when Kobra shrugs him off. "Don't you fucking walk away from me. Fuck. Fucking _talk_ to me. What the hell just happened?"

Kobra stops and turns on his heel, punching Zas in the face as hard as he can. Zas goes down like Kobra shot him, his head snapping back against the dirt with a sickening thud. Kobra wraps his arms around himself, trying to catch his breath through the sudden numbness in his whole body. _Shit. Shit._

Zas lies there, eyes closed, and Kobra takes a shaky breath, swallowing dust and horror. "Are you dead?"

"Fuck you." Zas turns onto his side, curling in on himself. "Fucking fuck. What was that for? What is _wrong_ with you?"

Kobra drops to his knees next to Zas and checks the back of his head, running his fingers through the tangled curls looking for blood or...something. An open crack in the bone, Zas's brains spilling out.

"I'm fine. I've got a hard head. Let me up."

Kobra rocks back on his heels, rubbing his hands against his knees. "I panicked."

"Does panicking have to come with so much violence?"

"What are we _doing_?"

"You're having a psychotic break and I'm having a fucking concussion."

"I mean..." Kobra coughs and turns his head, spitting into the dust. "Forget it."

Disaster Boy's hand snaps out again, catching Kobra's arm. "Talk to me."

"It's nothing. It's not worth it. I'm sorry."

"Don't bullshit me." Zas holds on to him tightly enough that Kobra would have to really fight to get away, risking hurting both of them. "What made you panic?"

"Locked up underground. I hate being trapped."

Zas nods a little, easing his grip. "That's it? Nothing else?"

Kobra shrugs and wipes his sleeve across his mouth. "Not worth talking about."

"Bullshit again."

It's easier to look out at the desert than to look at him. "I still don't know what we're doing."

"I told you."

"I don't believe it."

There's a silence, and Kobra's waiting; he knows the only way Disaster Boy can react to being called a liar. There's going to be screaming. Wild arm gestures. Kicking things. It'll suck, but everything will be out in the open.

But it doesn't come. The silence just lingers, until finally Zas says, in a soft voice that doesn't even sound like his, "I couldn't do this without you."

"You don't have to. I just wish I knew what it _is_."

"Do you trust me?"

Kobra exhales sharply, looking away. "Don't be an asshole."

"Do you want to be done with this?"

Kobra's eyes snap to Zas's face. "You mean do I want to be done with you?" Zas shrugs. Kobra wonders if it's too soon after the last punch to hit him again. "No. I don't."

"Are you sure?"

"I love you, you idiot." Kobra shakes his head and reaches for Zas, then lets his hand drop as Zas pulls away. "So yeah, I'm sure."

"You've got all these people. A whole life." Zas shakes his head. "I've gotta tell you, baby, I'm jealous as hell of your crew."

Kobra blinks at him. "But that's different."

"Is it?"

"They're...my crew. It's like family."

Zas laughs a little, shaking his head and letting his hand fall to Kobra's knee. "I know, baby. That's what I'm jealous _of_."

"I don't get it."

Zas sighs and turns carefully on his knees, tapping at Kobra's hands until he opens his arms and lets Zas lean back against his chest. "I know you've got people looking out for you, watching your back. Taking care of you. And I'm glad, because that means I know you're safe, or as close as any of us are gonna get. But I'm also jealous as _fuck_ , because I wish I could be the one doing that. I'm jealous as fuck that they've got your back and I don't."

"You could join up with us." Kobra rests his chin on top of Zas's head, staring out at the desert. 

"Kobra."

"Or you could put your own crew together. I wish you would. I don't like thinking about you out there alone."

"I don't work well with others. I'm a stand-alone kind of guy."

"You're stubborn."

"That, too." Zas tips his head, letting it rest on Kobra's shoulder. "I don't ever want to know somebody else died because of me. Not again."

Kobra fights to swallow. "And I don't want to never know if you're alive or dead because there's nobody to tell the story."

"That means you'll always have hope. I'll be like a shadow. Never gone."

Kobra wraps his arms around him tighter, wishing he could make him understand, wishing that even out here in the desert it was safe to throw his head back and just scream.

Zas is quiet for a long time before he speaks again. "I'm sorry for being the way I am."

"I love you, too."

"Even though I'm a human shitshow?"

Kobra lies back, slowly, guiding Zas down with him so his back is still to Kobra's chest. "Poison has this theory, right? An idea that things are different out here. The radiation, the heat, all the people who've died or been ghosted or...anything. All the shadows. He thinks that all that energy comes together out here to make magic. That being out in it means we all turn into who we want to be."

"I don't know if I ever wanted to be this." Zas' hand finds Kobra's, squeezing tight. "But who we're supposed to be...that I could maybe buy."

They sit together in the desert quiet for a long time before they climb back on their bikes and return to the Cantina to get their gear. Kobra can't stand the thought of another night locked up underground, even for another night of having Zas to himself in peace and privacy. They load up and hit the cracktop toward Battery City before sundown.

It's not until they've put a good ten miles under the bikes that he realizes Zas never told him the truth about the plan.

**

Being back in Battery City is like sliding into skin that doesn't fit anymore. Kobra itches all the time, half phantom sensations from memory and half the feeling of being watched. And they _are_ being watched; if every square foot of the City doesn't have eyes, it's not for lack of trying.

The buildings are too close, there's no air, and the light is wrong. He has an endless list of complaints.

Zas doesn't seem half as uncomfortable. He sheds his skin and pulls on a new one with ease, changing the tune and frequency of his aggression and hyperverbiage along with his shirt and shoes. Kobra watches him with a little envy and a little awe, falling into line a half-step behind without really thinking about it. It's where he's used to walking. He's good at analyzing the view. 

Zas's contacts are Middle-City, based out of an elegant, small but neatly-appointed apartment in a high-rise. They introduce themselves as Alex, Victoria, and Ryland. They're beautiful and clean and they smile too much.

They provide Kobra and Zas with dark suits, expensive ties and shoes, and clean ID cards to replace the ones from Doc Feelgood that got them through the checkpoints. Ryland produces scissors and a razor and gives them both haircuts. Meals appear like clockwork. Reading material and jack-ins to the network are available at all times.

It's so efficient it scares the shit out of Kobra. There aren't any shortages here. He doesn't have to make do. It's fucking wrong.

He can't tell if Zas doesn't notice his unease, or just doesn't want to call it out where the contacts will hear. That's the other thing about them; at least one of them is always _there_ , hovering, smiling perfect glass-surface smiles and ready to offer assistance. 

"Are they even human?" he whispered in Zas's ear the first night, while their hosts jacked into the network and let them eat. "If they're bots, you should tell me. Bots give me the fucking creeps."

Zas looked over at the three of them, then back to Kobra with a patient, indulgent smile that Kobra wanted to knock down his throat. "They're not bots."

"Are they ghosts?"

"No. They're just good at what they do."

"They're creepy."

"That's part of what they do." Zas caught his hand under the table and squeezed it tight. "We're safe here. I promise. Just trust them. Or trust me, anyway. You do trust me, don't you?"

"That's an asshole move," he says, and Zas squeezes again, grinning at him like he knows he's already won. "You're an asshole," he repeats, and stalks off to another corner of the creepy sterile expensive paralyzing apartment to sulk.

So he's quiet, and he waits. Things are in motion, Zas assures him. The contacts are doing what they do, the mysterious things they're so good at. Kobra should relax, enjoy this time in luxury. He should enjoy himself, if he remembers how.

Kobra doesn't rise to the bait. He doesn't remember how to enjoy this, because this was never his life here. He wasn't a Middle-City kid, he was a rat. Zas was, too, but Zas had fit into his own skin, back then. Maybe that was why he wasn't having the same crawling feeling of wrongness as Kobra now. Maybe it was just an echo.

Kobra doesn't ask too many questions after that. He reaffirmed his trust and he'll stand by that, even if it makes him feel like he's falling. But he doesn't reach for Zas at night, either, even when he wakes up in a cold sweat with his breath choked off in his chest. He collects the little things he notices out of the corner of his eye--the way the three contacts don't defer to Zas as subordinates in a dangerous exercise should. The way they leave their jack-ins lying around, or swap between them carelessly, not studied carelessness but _real_ , a difference that's only subtle if it isn't life or death.

The way Zas looks at him too much, his eyes lingering on Kobra like he has all the time in the world to study him. The way Zas touches him too much, not needy desert-touches that demand a fast answer but slow, clinging things that Kobra doesn't know how to interpret or respond to. Touches in another language.

Zas _smiles_ too much. For where they are, and what they're doing, he smiles much too much.

Kobra doesn't understand how the pieces fit together, but he keeps collecting, rolling them back and forth behind his eyes every night.

**

Kobra lies on the couch, staring at the ceiling and wondering if they would care if he took their appliances apart and built weapons from the pieces, when Zas leans over him and taps him on the nose. "Get dressed."

Kobra snaps his teeth at Zas's finger. "Why?"

"We're going to go see how the plan is going."

" _Is_ the plan going?" They've been here for over a week and as far as he can tell nothing has happened. A lot of cryptic conversations, occasionally Zas peering over one of the contacts' shoulders at a screen and saying yes or no, but they haven't even gone _outside_ in all this time.

"My little birds say yes." Zas taps him on the lip this time, and lets Kobra catch him. "I want to see for myself."

Kobra worries his teeth against Zas's finger for a moment, then lets him go. "You're as bored as I am, huh?"

"I'm fucking dying." Zas laughs and smoothes the front of his suit. It's a deep gray, close-fitted over a pale lavender shirt and a deep purple tie. Whichever of their three hosts chose it has a good eye. "So go get pretty. We'll hit a bar or two and wait for the message to jack over the newsfeed."

"Is it on a schedule?"

"Random pulse. The Doc is good at what he does."

Kobra smiles a little and goes back to the bedroom he and Zas share, where the suit is hanging from the window shade. It's black, with a delicate pinstripe pattern, a silvery shirt, and a thin black tie. He's fairly sure he looks ridiculous in it, especially with his hair dyed flat black and combed tightly to his skull in the only way that's acceptable in Battery City.

Zas doesn't seem to object, though. He offers his arm as Kobra comes out of the bedroom. "We should mess each other up a little bit or else we'll be the talk of the town."

"I doubt it." Kobra doesn't take his arm, but he lets Zas lean in for a kiss. "And I'm not going to dance with you."

"You break my heart." Zas taps a message into the datapad by the door. "My three little angels will meet up with us later."

"Are they working on this, too? Tonight, I mean."

"They've got five or six things going at once. I don't monopolize their time." Zas snorts slightly and holds the door for Kobra. "I can't _afford_ to monopolize their time. We're staying with some very expensive people."

"And what exactly are you paying them to _do_?"

"Network. Whisper. Say the right things to the right people. Smile. Flirt. Talk their way into places and back out again." Zas' hand settles on the small of Kobra's back on the short walk to the elevator. "And we probably shouldn't discuss this anymore tonight."

Kobra tilts his head in acknowledgment and doesn't speak again until they're out on the street, walking toward whatever club is first on Zas' agenda. He can feel the ground vibrating through the soles of his shoes, the traffic in the tunnels below steady enough to make things shake even at this hour. "So what should we talk about instead?"

"You pick."

It's Kobra's turn to reach out. Zas's hands are in his pockets now, flaring the lapels of the suit and incidentally holding it just enough away from his waist that Kobra can curl his finger in the belt loop and tug Zas in close to him. "I pick that we _not_ talk."

"No talking. No dancing." Zas raises an eyebrow at him and reaches over to touch Kobra's lips again. "What, then?"

"It's been a long time since I've been in to a club," Kobra says, letting his tongue dart against the tip of Zas's finger, but not letting it in. "Actually, I've never been in the kind of club we're going to find around here."

"I was going to say."

Kobra steps back, leaving it up to Zas to follow. "Do you think these clubs still have back rooms?"

**

Kobra gets his way; they don't talk. They sip drinks and watch the monitors over the bar, waiting for the moment where the newsfeed breaks up into static and resolves into dust.

Kobra almost smiles at the sight--grainy, askew footage of dust. It's ugly and awful and comforting as only the sight of home can be. The camera adjusts until some sky is in the frame, too, and Zas squeezes his hand gently. One of the little errors Doc Feelgood edited in to make this look more real than real.

The rest of the video doesn't make much of an impression, for Kobra. It's quick-cut footage of people going about their business in Battery City, some shots of graffiti over BLInd and S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W signage, and blurry images of four brightly-clad men on bikes that Kobra recognizes in an instant as the shitty reenactments used in all the newsfeeds, not even actual shots of his crew. He shoots Zas a questioning look and gets back an easy shrug and a smile. Right. More real than real. Give them what they _expect_ to see.

The final shot is a black screen with white lettering. **WE'RE COMING.**

"Art," Zas whispers as the screen fuzzes back into the newsfeed and the room buzzes with confused chatter. "Magnificent."

"I wouldn't go that far." Kobra finishes his drink and takes Zas' from his hand, draining that too. "Come on."

Zas's hand curls around his wrist as they weave through the crowd to the back room. "Watching that turned you on? Narcissist."

"No." He pulls Zas to the farthest corner of the back room, where it's almost pitch-dark. He can pretend they're anywhere else. Joker's room, the Cantina, the burned-out Outskirts bars where they did this for the first time. "But I know it did the job for you, and I'm feeling generous."

"So cruel to me, Kid." Zas finds his mouth and kisses him hard before Kobra can reply. He catches Zas's tie in his hand, tugging at it until Zas pulls away again. "What?"

Kobra shakes his head, the words he's almost pulled together abandoning him again as soon as he has the chance to say them. He touches, instead, tracing the lines of Zas' temples and cheekbones and jaw in the dark. Zas's breath is warm against his fingers, and Kobra wishes he could see his eyes, or that he could strip off the shirts and jackets and press close enough to feel his heart.

Zas's arms wrap around him, low and loose, a caress more than a hold. Kobra leans in against his chest and lets two fingers settle at the hollow of Zas' throat.

"We're in this together," Zas whispers. "You and me til the sun goes out, baby."

Kobra nods and kisses him, letting his hands slide down to undo Zas's fly. That's all he wants, all he would ever ask for. Just that much.

**

It feels like the plan unfolds slowly, but really, it's only a day or two between footage drops. Some of them are the same footage in a different location, others are new. Kobra can't find a pattern. As far as he can see, Zas chooses each one on the spur of the moment, based on how he reads the mood of the chat channels he tracks on Ryland's tablet from the couch. 

The arbitrariness of it all, Zas's continued fucking smiles, the stillness, the cleanliness, the _quiet_ ; Kobra thinks it might be driving him out of his mind. He's starting to have dreams, ones that drive him awake gasping and shaking in the cold, recycled air. He remembers being young, but it's wrong--it's his current mind, his current _self_ , trapped in a body that's too small and feels like it's made of glass. He can't breathe in it.

Whenever he wakes up like that, Zas wakes up a few minutes later, mumbling thick sleepy words and pulling him close, sheltering him in the warm curve of his body until his heart slows and he can center himself again. They still don't mess around; it doesn't fit with this fucking place. He couldn't if he tried. But Zas holds him, and they breathe together, and that's--it's better. He's glad for that.

Everything feels wrong, and he isn't safe. He's never going to be safe here.

Kobra breaks quarantine on day eight, when the tension has settled in his stomach and twisted and peaked until he can't fucking stand it anymore. Things are coming to a head, moving toward the inevitable showdown, and he still doesn't _quite_ understand all of it, can't quite see the full picture. It's like he's listening to music from a few rooms away. He can tell it's building to a climax, he can identify the crescendo, but it's just a buzz with no individual threads.

It's not a blind-panic run like the Cantina. He thinks about it, and he moves slowly. Still, Zas is going to tan his hide when he figures it out.

He waits for Zas to fall asleep and then he ditches the apartment. He doesn't know this part of the city and doesn't have a pass for Transit, so he just walks, up one street and down another. The city hurts his eyes. It doesn't make any sense that steel and concrete and dull white paint would be brighter than direct sunlight off the desert, but his eyes ache and water more with every step he takes, and finally he steps into an infopoint alcove just so he can lean on the wall and shield them with his hands for a moment.

The infopoint screen beeps pleasantly, aware of his presence. He has one of Alex's jacks in his pocket, a victim of his restless inability to keep his hands still. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hands and plugs the jack in, blinking as the screen comes up with a solid web of preset channels and messages. Shit. Alex is a total wavehead. 

He shouldn't look, but it's been a long time since privacy was more than an abstract concept, and anyway, Alex is nothing to him. He touches the screen and flips through Alex's standard news channel. All entertainment; announcements on games and music and vidstream stars. It takes him three click-outs to find the BLInd summary headlines.

What he sees makes his breath stop for a minute. 

_Riots in the Outskirts. Protests in the Lower City. Lower City demands military force to stop coming invasion from the Zones._

_"There is no army. No invasion," head of S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W states._

Kobra traces his finger slowly over the image of Korse next to that headline, and the infopoint obligingly brings up his standard BLInd biography. Kobra flinches back, rubbing his hand on his jacket. Fuck. This got out of hand when nobody was even looking. Zas's stupid plan wasn't supposed to actually _work_.

The edge of the screen flashes white, and his eyes flick to it, just in time for the beam to travel from top to bottom. He jerks back, covering his eyes, but it's too late; the screen immediately switches to the standard BLInd warning graphic.

_Retinal scan identity does not match registration. Please provide fingerprints immediately._

Kobra steps back from the infopoint, reaching for a blaster that he doesn't have. The graphic blinks, and he can imagine the clock ticking down, the data moving through the system, pulling up the identity that disappeared from the official radar years ago and putting it out into every system as a suspicious person.

_Fuck._

"There you are." Zas steps into the alcove, his movements tense and fast, his jaw set. "What the fuck are you doing? You just took off, I thought--"

"I got scanned."

Zas looks at the screen, his eyes going wide. "Shit."

"We need to move. Now." Kobra pushes him back into the street, leaving the jack jammed into the infopoint. 

"Whose jack is that?"

"Alex."

"Fuck." Zas pulls a texter out of his pocket and types rapidly, then throws it into the gutter. "Yeah, let’s move."

They have to look casual, no matter how much Kobra’s instincts are screaming at him to bolt. They’re dressed all wrong to make a break for the Lower City, where he knows how to feel safe, so he’s stuck walking down the street in fucking Mid-City, like they belong here, like nothing’s wrong.

"Can we go back to the apartment?" he asks under his breath, stopping alongside Zas to study a vidscreen.

"Not yet. I told Alex to report the jack stolen and file for an identity check. We can’t go back until he’s been screened." Zas leans in close to the vidscreen, his eyes fixed on the news crawl. "We need to find somewhere to go to ground."

Kobra stares past him, down the street. No Dracs, no BLInd agents, but there are too many walls and corners. He wants to be able to see the sky. "I burned the plan, didn't I?"

"Don't worry about that now."

"What the fuck else am I supposed to--"

"Run."

Running in the city is different from running in the desert. It's more like scrambling, dodging, hiding. They work their way down-City, shedding bits of clothing as they go, keeping their heads down and veering away from infopoints and security cams. Kobra's heart is racing, his thoughts clear and cold with adrenaline, his fingertips tingling as anticipation vasoconstricts his extremities and gets him ready to move.

He feels really fucking alive. 

"This is like back in the Outskirts," he whispers, pressed up between Zas's body and the alley wall, waiting for their next chance to move. 

Zas huffs a soft laugh against his hair. "Like we're fucked-up stupid adrenaline junkies chasing a fix?"

"Aren't we?"

"Pretty much." Zas nudges Kobra's chin up and kisses him hard and fast, his teeth scraping Kobra's lip as he pulls away. "I love you, you know that?"

"Shit." Kobra presses his own kiss to Zas's neck. "Are we about to die?"

Zas laughs again, stepping back and grabbing Kobra's hand. "Probably. Fuck the Dracs, man, let's just run for it."

**

They slow down when they get to the Lower City, across the invisible line where the patrols drop off unless BLInd has a reason to be down there making a point. "You remember how to pick a lock?" Zas asks, putting his arm around Kobra's waist and pulling him in close. 

"I remember how to break a window."

"Elegance and subtlety are lost on you."

"Look who's talking."

"Hush before you break my heart, baby." Zas stops outside one of the boarded-up shops that line the Lower City streets and tests the door. "Someone broke this one for us. How thoughtful."

"If we walk in on somebody else's squat, we're probably going to wake up eating blaster, you know."

"We'll take all sensible precautions." Zas reaches back and Kobra takes his hand, letting Zas pull him into the building. It's dark, and it smells dry and musty. Not quite like the desert, but closer than the air outside.

Sensible precautions, in Zas's world, means walking around kicking the piles of junk in the room and making sure nothing's alive under them. Having established that, it apparently means pushing Kobra up against a wall and kissing him with single-minded purpose.

Kobra closes his eyes and gives in to the kiss, half his head still caught up in the rush of adrenaline and memories, of how riding the edge of panic and danger is a fucking _high_ when you're in the moment instead of planning six steps ahead. He could wind up dead any minute and he won't be leaving anyone's back unguarded. He doesn't have to fear losing part of his crew, like losing a limb--the spot they're in now, if he sees Zas go down it'll only be because the Dracs flipped a coin for which one they're shooting first. 

Finding preferable flavors of death is a high. The world is so fucked up.

He slides his hand down and grabs the back of Zas's knee, pulling it up and over until he can straddle Zas's thigh. Zas groans and nods, bracing his hands on either side of Kobra's head and rubbing his thigh up while Kobra grinds down. "Fuck," he whispers, his breath hot against Kobra's cheek. "Fuck, yes. Touch me, _fuck_ , I want you."

Kobra pops the button on Zas's trousers, working his hand inside and wrapping it around his dick. "Missed this," he whispers, knowing Disaster Boy will understand what he means. Not the sex itself, but the edge of it, the way it's just another stupid death-defying stunt among many. They're not heroes, not even in their own minds, not right now. They just _are_ , and they take what they want, what feels good.

They can't live that way all the time. But maybe they can't live without it completely, either.

**

They sleep on the floor of the squat, Kobra's head pillowed on Zas's chest. Kobra wakes up first, disoriented in the dark. The windows are boarded up solidly; it must be morning by now, but still, no light gets in. He gets to his feet and moves back to the door, opening it a crack to peer out into the street. A handful of people go about their business, but it's quiet. No announcements howling over the public speakers, no announcements lighting up the vidscreens. Just an ordinary day in Battery City.

Kobra stares out at the quiet, ordinary, even peaceful street, and suspicions he's been ignoring start tapping at his shoulder. 

He's still standing at the door when Zas comes up behind him and slips his arms around his waist. "Hey," he murmurs, resting his chin on Kobra's shoulder. "You're being a little noticeable."

"Nobody's paying attention to me."

"You know that for sure?"

Kobra takes a breath and holds it in his chest for a moment, trying to decide if he really wants to do this or not. He doesn't. But he has to. "What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been lying to me."

Zas goes still, his grip on Kobra's waist easing. "What makes you say that?"

"The guy running around with me last night. The guy telling me to get out of the doorway now. He's acting like a Zonerunner who's kept himself alive for a while. Who knows what he's doing." Kobra turns slowly to face Zas, who lets go of him and steps back. "The guy I've been seeing for the last couple weeks? He's not."

Zas stares at him, face carefully blank now. "You making an accusation?"

"I already did."

"I can't believe you don't fucking trust me. All this time, all this...everything we've gone through, and you don't _trust_ me."

"Give me a reason to trust you." Kobra's voice wants to shake, his hands want to reach out, but he's a Killjoy. He has better control than that.

"If you don't think I'm acting like I should, then maybe it's not lying you're worried about." Zas takes a step toward him, careful and threatening. "Sounds more like being ghosted, to me. Is that what you really want to know, Kid? If I'm a ghost? A BLInd prick stooge?"

Kobra sets his teeth, wishing he had his blaster, or that he was at least wearing his own fucking clothes. Being dressed like a Killjoy would make it so much _easier_ to be one right now, shut down all of the conflict choking his throat and just do what has to be done. "You know too much to be a ghost."

"So maybe I'm a mole, right? BLInd bought me out? I've just been playing with you all this fucking time?"

"You tell me."

"How long, huh? How long would I have to have been playing? All the way back to when we got handfasted, Kid? All the way back to when we met?" Zas steps in close again, shoving at Kobra's chest. "Was I lying to you while we were running the Outskirts?"

"I don't fucking know," Kobra says, knocking his arms away, trying to move to where he'll have clear space to fight if he needs to. "You tell me."

"Fuck you, Kobra. I can't fucking believe this. All this fucking time and you think--"

"What else am I supposed to think? You drag me all over the desert and then you bring me _here_ , with a plan you won't explain until I drag it out of you and even then it doesn't make any fucking sense."

"The plan isn't--"

"There's holes you could drive a fucking convoy through, and you know it! It'll never work, even if I hadn't fucked it up. And that's another thing! I fucked it up and you didn't even fucking _care_! What the fuck is going on? Why are you lying to me?"

"Of course it wouldn't work," Zas shouts. "It was never supposed to work."

Kobra's hand jerks toward where his blaster's supposed to be, and he forces himself to curl it into a fist instead. It's not shaking. Amazing how while the desert was turning him into what he's supposed to be, it wiped out all those kinds of little shreds of humanity. "Tell me the truth. You owe me that."

"I needed you."

"To turn me in to BLInd?" Kobra swallows and digs his fingers into his palms, not letting himself look toward the door. "Are they on their way now?"

"Fuck _off_ , Kobra, I can't fucking believe this. I'm not a traitor. I'm not turning you in to anybody. I'm not fucking _working_ for them."

"Then why did you need me?"

"Because I missed you!" Zas's voice breaks now, and he throws his hands in the air, turning away. "I fucking...I missed you."

Kobra stands there for a moment, too lost to speak.

"I missed you," Zas says again, then laughs sharply. "Yeah."

"Then why didn't you just..." Kobra shakes his head. "That's bull. If you missed me, you could've just found me and run with us for a while. You didn't have to make up a really stupid plan and drag me all over the place, take me away from my guys, bring me to the place where they want to fucking kill me. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Oh come on. Be honest, Kid." Zas steps close again and Kobra sinks back on his heels, not giving way as Zas gets up in his face. "I show up and say I miss you, I want to see you, what would you say? That you're a Killjoy and you've got a mission. You've got your _guys_. You've got more important things. You can't just go off with me."

Kobra stares at him, his heart twisting in his chest. "I _did_ go with you."

"Yeah. Because I told you it was for a purpose." Zas shakes his head, his voice going tight. "For the mission. The good fight, or whatever the fuck you guys call it. Resistance. Whatever."

"Since when do you not believe in that?"

"I believe in it. I believe." Zas gestures helplessly at himself, at Kobra, at the city out of sight beyond the walls. "But what's the point of doing any of this if you don't have the person you're in it for?"

"You don't like having people. You don't _want_ people."

"Yeah. Right. Of course." Zas steps back, looking away. "How could I forget?"

"I'm just repeating what you told me. What happened to being a shadow?"

"It's lonely? Okay? It's fucking lonely. And sometimes I look around the fucking desert and I realize that if I put my gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger, nobody would ever know or give a shit if they did." Kobra shakes his head, opening his mouth to speak, but Zas keeps talking. "And we're not getting anywhere. You know that we're never fucking going to win, Kid. We're never going to take down BLInd. We're never going to change things in the City. This is not a game we can win, and the mission is bullshit."

"So you brought me here to get killed along with you? You want somebody sharing that grave?"

"No! God. No." Zas reaches for him, not quite touching. "I just...I needed to remember why I ever bothered in the first place. And that was you. It was always you."

Kobra can't be the first one to touch. Not now, not like this, when Zas still isn't making any fucking sense and there's too much of a chance that they're both going to die because their lives are set on fucked-up parallel tracks that mean they're always looking and talking right past each other. "You still brought me to a place where people want to kill me, with a plan that had exactly zero chance in hell of succeeding."

Zas shrugs, a tiny, helpless jerk of his shoulders. "I didn't really think it all the way through, I guess."

"You didn't..." Kobra wants to laugh. It ends up as a sharply indrawn breath, because there's not enough air in his lungs for the other.

"I'm sorry," Zas says.

"You mean that. I know you do." He does. He could never doubt it, with Zas looking at him that fucking way. "But you dragged my crew into this. You put us at risk. We're going to be hunted harder than ever because you couldn't use words."

Zas jerks back, his face going blank with hurt. "Well, at least you'll have each other."

Kobra's out the door before the silence falls, and running before he catches his breath.

**

He doesn't go far. There's nowhere _to_ go, not for him; going up-City would probably walk him right into BLInd's hands, and down-City will get him taken out by the people who know the lay of the land around here.

He's standing in one of the flat concrete plazas where public announcements are made via vidscreen when Disaster Boy finds him. The screen's blank and quiet now, the plaza empty. Kobra stands with his back to the wall, watching trash blow across the ground and trying to slow his thoughts down to a pace where he can actually think.

Thinking and planning isn't supposed to be his job, though. He's supposed to move fast, shoot well, and trust everyone else to carry their weight. None of that's doing him any good here and now.

Fuck it, anyway.

"I thought you were trying to get yourself killed, running off like that. Again."

Kobra shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the piece of plastic twisting in the wind. Zas crosses the plaza slowly and leans against the wall beside him. 

Kobra breaks the silence first. "What the fuck is wrong with you? I mean for real."

"This is what I like about you. You cut to the chase." Zas exhales and shrugs, tilting his head to look up at the colorless stretch of sky. "I'm getting older."

"We all are."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to end up dead for it."

"We _all_ are, jackass."

"You know what I mean." Zas isn't moving, isn't yelling; he's still enough that Kobra thinks he can feel his heartbeat where their shoulders touch, and his voice is low and tired. "You came with me."

"Of course I did."

"There's no of course about it." Zas shifts against the wall, leaning into Kobra more and then turning on his shoulder to face him. "You haven't seen me in ages. Some stupid words and tying a bracelet on your wrist, that doesn't have to...it doesn't mean anything unless you want it to. I know that. I always knew that. But you came with me, and all I did was ask."

Kobra meets his eyes, waiting it out when Zas's glance dodges away and back. "When I make promises, I keep them."

"So I'm an obligation? A debt?"

Kobra huffs with frustration and grabs Zas's hand, twisting it until he can thread their fingers together and then squeezing until Zas looks at him again. "When I choose a person, I don't give up on them. I chose you, you stupid, crazy..." He has to stop and breathe, fighting back the choke in his throat and heat in his eyes. "Brave, glorious, fucking idiot."

Zas has never kissed him so softly. "I kind of believe you mean that."

"You still love me?"

Zas rests his forehead against Kobra's. "You have to ask?"

"I always have to ask."

"Yes. I do."

Kobra nods, rubbing his thumb over the back of Zas's hand. "You...there's something about you. Fire. Lightning. Excitement."

"You can't tell me you don't get plenty of excitement being a Fabulous Killjoy."

"It's different with you. What you expect from me, what you don't expect from me, I don't...I don't know. You bring something into my life I don't get anywhere else, and I never realize I miss it until you're there again."

"You bring me something, too. But I miss it all the time." He shrugs before Kobra can ask the obvious question, while he's still taking the breath to demand _then why don't you come to me more often?_ "You said the desert turns us into who we're supposed to be. I'm supposed to be a fucking disaster, Kid. That's...that's all I can be. All I can do. And you deserve better than that."

Kobra kisses him, pushing his tongue against Zas's lips until he relents and lets him in. When they pull apart again, he takes a breath and then smacks Zas's chest as hard as he can. "Don't you ever fucking say that to me again. Asshole. I can't believe you."

"Constant violence." Zas closes his eyes and leans his head against the wall, but there's the smallest trace of a smile about his mouth. "What now?"

"Can you give me an _actual_ explanation for what the fuck this was all about?"

"I didn't think it would work. I thought you would tell me to fuck off. And then things kept...working, and I didn't want you to leave, so I had to keep everything in the air. Keep running." Zas shrugs, a one-shouldered jerk that thumps his head against the wall. "Since that's my one God-given talent, it worked out okay for way longer than I expected."

"You're impossible." Kobra brushes his lips over Zas's closed eyelids. "We've got to figure out what we're going to do now."

"I can get us back out of the city. Give me 24 hours."

"I don't know if it's going to be that easy."

"Trust me. I know what I'm doing."

There are so many ways Kobra could call that out, and he know that Zas knows it, knows that he did it deliberately just so he can prove to himself he's not good enough or some other goddamn fucking game. Kobra's torn between kneeing him in the balls and continuing on like he didn't even hear that. Option one is tempting; option two is less likely to get sudden attention drawn their way.

"I'm flagged in the system now," he says, keeping his voice soft and close to Zas's shoulder. "The scan. My prints, my retinal scans, it's all going to be on the first-level checks."

"So we'll need to go underground."

"If we're caught, I'm going to get ghosted." For everything he said in the desert, for all his certainty, there's still a cold tremor in his spine when he thinks about it. If they catch him, he _will_ be taken apart, everything he really is put to sleep with drugs and brain-jacks for who knows how long before it can fight to the surface again. He'll lose so much. Not everything--never everything--but more than he can put into words.

Zas's hand cups carefully against his cheek, turning his head until they're looking at each other again. "So we'll go to ground until that goes back down off the flagged list."

"Who knows how long that's going to take?" Kobra shakes his head a little, not enough to dislodge Zas's hand. "I can't just wait here in stasis indefinitely. I can't fucking breathe in this city. I'll lose my mind."

"Like that's still possible." Zas puts two fingers over Kobra's lips before he can snap back. "Okay. No waiting it out. We'll give them something else to think about." He starts to smile, and Kobra raises an eyebrow, demanding an answer before he has to start biting. "Yeah. We'll keep them busy."

Kobra bites Zas's index finger. "What exactly do you have in mind?"

"Isn't it obvious?" This time, Zas kisses him like normal, nothing gentle at all. "We do my stupid-ass plan for real."

**

They can't go back up-City, but Disaster Boy knows an impressive network of rats in all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. They end up hiding out under the floor of the last terminal cafe in a burned-out ward of the Lower City, owned and operated by two techies Zas swears can be trusted. 

"They've got me out of tight spots before," he says, his hand tight in Kobra's own, guiding him down the steps into the hidden room. "They're both pillheads, but not so bad that they'll rat us out. Spencer's worked with the Joker, and Nate's his oldest friend. Like family. Like your crew. You can't do better cred than that, right?"

Kobra knows when he's being played, but he also knows when to give up the fight. 

The hidden room is cold and smells like mildew, but it's reasonably secure, and Nate and Spencer send food down twice a day. It's also a treasure house of old tech. Everything they need, stacked in boxes three-deep and just needing to be sorted out and wired together.

Of course, neither of them is tech-inclined, which is what sent them running all over the fucking desert and trusting Disaster Boy's Upper City contacts in the first place.

"We don't know what we're doing," Kobra says for the tenth time, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and watching Zas suck on burned fingers while the board responsible for them lies on the floor with its wires still exposed and sparking. 

"We'll fake it."

"Faking it could very easily get us shot."

"Do you have a better idea? You were the one who didn't want to run."

"I _can't_ run." He hates saying it, hates hearing the words echo back to himself off the walls. He hates being trapped here. He hates who he used to be for making this happen, hates himself for not being born right so it wouldn't have happened at all. He hates and he's cold and down here under the dead dirt and concrete of the City there's nowhere to run.

He can't breathe, suddenly. He curls in on himself, pressing his forehead to his knees, forcing himself to drag ragged breaths through clenched teeth. He misses the desert, the danger and death he understands and welcomes as kin. He misses his crew. He can imagine them right now, stuck down in this stupid room together, how Ghoul would be pacing and Jet would be working the problem and Poison would be _seething_ , boiling over with energy, just waiting for a chance to come up shooting.

And he wouldn't have to try, wouldn't have to think about a damn thing, because all they would need from him is his eyes and his gun hand and the fact that they could trust him to run on cue. The idea of not being needed is a powerful hit right now.

Hands settle on his shoulders, guiding him back slowly until he's lying on his back. He blinks up at Zas's face, his knees still drawn to his chest. "What?"

"Relax," Zas says quietly. He pushes Kobra's knees down, gets him lying flat, then stretches out on top of him. Kobra gasps; Zas is heavy, solid, almost too-warm in the chilly air of the hidden room. Like he's got a little bit of desert in him. Kobra's fingers curl into Zas's shirt at the thought, keeping him close.

"We're going to do this." Zas kisses his cheek, then his forehead, light and soft. "You and me." Other cheek, his nose, his chin. "I'm going to make it all up to you. All my bullshit. Taking your crew's name in vain."

Kobra doesn't mean to say the words, but his body betrays him. "And if we don't?" 

Zas breathes him in, lips barely brushing Kobra's mouth. "Then we're going down together. I won't let them take you." He kisses him, hard and bruising, and Kobra can taste blood where Zas has been biting his own lips raw. "I promise."

**

Spencer jacks in and checks the system for them every couple of days. Every report is the same: M. Way, Citizen ID #81313957, flagged on the highest level. 

"I'm never going to get out," Kobra says after they've been in hiding three weeks. "You should go without me."

"I owe you a punch in the face for that." Zas stares down at the five-generations-old tablet Nate found for him. "But I will never pay up, don't worry."

"Because I'm going to be trapped in this fucking basement losing my mind forever."

"Because Poison would hunt me down and gut me if I ever laid a hand on you."

Kobra snorts and shakes his head, finally cracking a smile when Zas sticks his tongue out at him. "Let me see what you're doing."

Zas hands the tablet over and Kobra runs the file from the beginning, watching their hacked little video. "Not as good as Dr. Feelgood's."

"You're such a critic." Zas rests his head against Kobra's shoulder. "It's just about ready for the drop."

"Time for round twelve of this argument, then?"

"It's not an argument. It's you being a stubborn piece of dick and me being right."

"Stubborn piece of dick?"

"I don't know. I'm tired. Leave me alone."

Kobra snorts again and kisses the top of Zas's head. "I'm not sending you out there by yourself."

"And I'm not letting you risk getting scanned. QED."

They sit silently for a few minutes while Kobra runs the file again and again. "I'm going to risk being scanned when we run for it, too."

"But there's going to be a hell of a lot more distractions going on, then. That's the whole idea."

"I'm flagged in the system." Kobra swallows, running his thumb over the controls, making the video jog forward and back. "Poison's flagged, too, by now."

"No." Zas takes the tablet away and sets it on the floor. "Two people who died years ago are flagged. Kobra Kid and Party Poison are...well. You're way up over flagged, baby. You're marked to exterminate."

Kobra tilts his head in acknowledgment, closing his eyes as Zas pulls him into his lap.

"Only you, my beloved."

Kobra opens one eye a crack. "Only me what?"

"Only you would _undersell_ the level of how much BLInd wants to fucking kill you."

Kobra has to laugh. It hurts like hell, like his lungs are fucking cramping in his chest with fear, but the sound is real. 

"There we go." Zas kisses his cheek, holding him tight. "That's what I want to hear."

Kobra holds on tight, and tries to keep laughing.

**

The grand plaza is packed solid with humanity. It gives Kobra the creeps. "You’re sure this is going to work?"

Zas slides his hand up Kobra's arm to rub the back of his neck. "Relax."

At the head of the plaza stands the big stage, with Dracs two layers deep around it, and the biggest vidscreen in Battery City providing its own backdrop. "What if they found the jack?"

"Relax." Zas taps Kobra on the hip until he steps aside and lets Zas have a better view from the alcove they’ve been camped in all morning. They’re wearing Middle City clothes again, like they came up for the day just to see Korse’s announcement, and Kobra feels like half an imposter in his own body again. He's just not meant to be clean.

He has his glasses on, which is earning a few curious glances, but it lets him pretend the scanners can't find his eyes. Not true. But it's more comforting than Zas's assurance that if anyone tries to scan them, he'll start shooting and Kobra can run.

For all his promises as a Killjoy, Kobra knows that if it comes to that, he won't run at all. Disaster Boy is his family, his crew. Just like the three men waiting for him out in the desert. He wouldn't run if it meant leaving any one of them behind.

They're silent for a minute, leaning against each other and watching the movements of the officials up near the stage. Finally Zas draws a breath. "They’re coming out."

Kobra bites his tongue as Korse emerges from the grand doors and walks across the stage. He doesn't wave to the crowd, exactly; he gestures sharply and silence rolls back through the tightly-packed bodies. That kind of casual power has always sent a shiver down Kobra's spine. He doesn't know what it means, or how to work with it. Or around it, for that matter. It just makes him want to grab Zas's arm and run.

But he can't even if it wouldn't get them both shot; he's boxed in with buildings and all he can do is breathe and bear witness.

The screen lights up with the images from Zas's video packages, running through all the fake Killjoy promises and vague threats, the manipulated evidence of them riding and shooting that was stitched together to make Battery City more afraid than it otherwise is. Kobra's fingers twitch against his palms, wanting his blaster, or at least wanting to be able to stand up for himself and his crew, to denounce this shit and the use that's about to be made of it.

The screens go black again and Korse begins to talk. The sound system in the plaza is wired up so that his voice seemed to come from just behind the listener's ear, wherever they stand. It's...intimate, in a way that makes Kobra's spine crawl again. He has to shove his hands into his pocket to keep from slapping at the back of his neck.

_Terrorism_ , Korse says, and _regrettable elements of society._ Kobra knows this part; it hasn't changed in years. _Corrections needed_ , that will come next, and _mutual benefit of the society._

His throat's closing up worse than it ever does out in the dust. If this goes on much longer without the alternate plan kicking in, he's going to scream and make a break for the walls. The guarantee that he'll die before he gets there would be a mercy.

Zas's hand takes his and squeezes tight. "Five seconds," he says. "Four, three, two..."

Korse is mid-sentence when the screen flares to life again. (It's the _corrections_ one, just like Kobra called it.) It's a white screen at first, and the crowd flinches back, either startled or hurt by the light. Korse stops, not turning to look but instead cutting his eyes to the side of the stage, where his people should have the answers, any other day in their world.

Today they tripped on a wire and ended up in the middle of a Disaster Boy plan. Kobra can't blame them for their confusion.

The screen cuts from white to black, and Kobra blinks hard, curling his fingers into his palms to keep from rubbing his eyes. Korse snaps something to his people, just off the mic, but their jack-in is holding solid, Victoria's work-around that they patched into their clumsy re-edits on Nate and Spencer's tech working just like the other drops did, just like it's supposed to. 

White text comes up on the black field, stark and unadorned. _You are the weapons._

Black again, and silence from the crowd, a moment of perfect stillness like the peak of a jump or the millisecond after the trigger's pulled.

_Living is the best defiance._

Korse is gesturing wildly now, like he wants them to kill the screen. Kobra's chest tightens, because only getting part of the message out feels worse than not getting any at all.

_We're not coming for you, but you are all welcome to come to us. We won't stop running._

"Fuck," Zas breathes, and Kobra squeezes his hand tightly. "I love it when it works."

_Every breath is revolution._

(Kobra remembers Zas rolling his eyes in their shitty little underground room, asking him if the other Killjoys knew that none of their pithy little slogans made the slightest goddamn bit of sense. It's working here, though, in the crowd, on a visceral level, somewhere lower than thought.)

(That's where everything that's free or feral or that makes any sense to _him_ happens, anyway.)

_Keep your hearts alive, and tear off the masks._

The screen goes up in color and light, Korse is striding off-stage with his face twisted in rage, the crowd is starting to move, and Disaster Boy and the Kobra Kid are running.

**

Kobra breathes deep, drawing air as dry as bones into his lungs and holding it there. "Feels like shit," he says finally, his voice tight before he lets himself exhale. "Welcome home."

"My sentiments exactly." Zas balance his helmet on his knee and runs both hands through his hair, squinting out over the dull landscape. "But hey. We lived."

"Everybody lived."

"Even the people who really shouldn't have."

Kobra doesn't let himself smile or sigh. "Next time."

"Yeah, right." Zas grins at him. "You never let me have any fun, Kid."

"That's what you married me for. To be your brains."

"One thing among many." Zas shakes his head and hooks his helmet over the handlebars of his bike. "So."

Kobra stares out at where the sun's breaking the horizon, sinking down under the earth. 

"You're free to run another day." Zas kicks his heel against the ground, sending up a puff of dirt. "So."

Kobra sighs. "I'm going to punch you if you say that again."

"You can't punch me. I already owe you one, going into punch-debt wouldn't be fair." Zas's heart isn't in the game; Kobra can hear it, the worried yearning under the banter. "You got any idea where your guys might be?"

"There's a reason they call it hiding."

"Fucker." Zas rolls his eyes. "I can get Joker to put out a call. Or Dr. D. Plan you guys a nice family reunion."

Kobra digs his teeth into his lip until he makes up his mind. "Shut up, man."

"Hey, I know how it is, you wanna get home to your boys and--"

"Shut up."

"I'll clear out of your way and just--"

Kobra grabs him by the front of his jacket and yanks him off his bike. "You just don't fucking listen, do you?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Fuck's sake." Kobra kisses him, not going easy on the teeth. "Goddamn fucking idiot."

Zas rests his head against Kobra's, closing his eyes and breathing deep. "Keep talking pretty to me, baby."

"I do have to find them. Yes." Kobra traces his fingers along Zas's jaw, down to the soft hollow of his throat. "But I can take some time first."

Zas's eyes widen a little, his hands settling on Kobra's waist. "Vacation?"

"Honeymoon."

Zas smiles, pure and wide and golden, everything Kobra remembers from the boy he first met in the Outskirts. "Where did you have in mind?"

Kobra shrugs and leans back against his bike, pulling Zas with him. "Let's go east and see what we find."

**Author's Note:**

> Dramatis Personae 
> 
> Disaster Boy: Gabe Saporta  
>  Dr. Feelgood: Travis McCoy  
>  The Joker: Pete Wentz  
>  The Queen of Hearts: Bebe Rexha  
>  Hell's Heroes: Empires  
>  Daddy Longlegs: William Beckett
> 
> Also the "Spencer" in Battery City is Spencer Peterson, not Smith.


End file.
